


electromagnetic

by seabear



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Jealousy, Lance is a gross flirt and Keith suffers, M/M, Mutual Pining, implied shallura
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-08-24 08:50:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 25,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8365993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seabear/pseuds/seabear
Summary: Lance spends a lot of time wondering about his place in the universe. And his place with Keith. Oh, also there’s a heist and some fake dating.





	1. Chapter 1

There is no sound in space. 

It was pretty much every single professor's favorite joke. Like, “If a Surgejet 4-22 reaches its maximum heat capacity and explodes in deep space, and no one’s around to hear it, does it make a sound? Eh? Anybody?”

Trick question. Nothing in space makes a sound.

“Technically,” Pidge once explained, “there is sound in space. Sort of. It’s like...pulsations. Pulsations you need special equipment to record, and then someone can translate those recordings into soundwaves that the human ear will recognize.”

“Electromagnetic vibrations," Hunk added. “You can find audio clips online. It’s pretty wild. And horrifying. Mostly horrifying.”

“You’re both?" Lance pointed. "Humongous nerds.”

Pulsations aside, space is essentially one enormous, infinite, soundless void.

A void that Lance does his darndest to fill. 

“Yo! Someone get me a cup of that black sludge water. If I close my eyes and pretend I don’t taste anything, it’s practically coffee.”

A sly slide through the kitchen door, back in some well worn, well loved civvies after a morning suited up for training, Lance enters stage right. 

The entire castle is a constant echo. Every corridor, every odd angle, every endless ceiling. He spills out and over himself, too much volume, too much expression, too much. He talks with his hands, cartwheels away from tense moments, sings into airlocks and bursts onto scenes. It’s how he’s always been. He couldn’t change now, even if he wanted to.

Keith squints at him, eyes still sleep swollen and hair sticking out every which way even after two hours of training. Keith’s not much of a morning person. He’s not really an any time of the day person. Lance has devoted a large chunk of his thoughts to wondering if Keith is even a person at all. Fingers pinch at the bridge of a slim nose, and a frowning mouth spits, “Stop. Yelling.”

“I’m not yelling,” Lance yells. “I’m _projecting.”_

Hunk sighs from where he’s perched on the edge of the counter. “Oh, here we go.”

“I’ll have you know, I was the lead in my elementary school’s production of The Littlest Astronaut.” Lance flicks his fringe out of his face. “If I hadn’t decided to selflessly devote my life to protecting the universe, I would’ve been a _star,_ baby.”

“Well, you are a giant ball of fiery gas,” Pidge snorts, pushing goo around on the plate in front of her. “So you’re not that far off.”

“E tu, Pidge-ay?” Lance gasps. “And you’re eating the last of the slime green goo. Now there’s only lime green left. That’s cold, homie.” 

She snorts and flings a spoonful at him, and he dodges, laughing. He likes this the most. These stitched together moments, where they can all just be. Where Lance can be loud and Pidge can be snarky and Hunk can be rambling and Keith can be broody. Like they’re still just a bunch of cadets--a bunch of friends--back on Earth, and not the Paladins hurtling through deep space fighting an incredible and awesome, evil alien army. They’re a family, because that’s what they have to be. Lance needs them to be that for him, and even though he hasn’t said it out loud, he’s pretty sure they know.

He’s in the middle of expertly unleashing a merciless cereal assault on Pidge when steam curls in the corner of Lance’s vision. He turns, a mug of hot black sludge water attached to a fingerless gloved hand. Eyes flicker up to find Keith’s unamused face. There are still faint lines from the creases of his pillow. “Don’t you even get tired of being you?”

“I mean honestly, yes.” Lance drapes himself over the counter, back of his hand thrown over his forehead. “It’s exhausting work, being this incredibly good looking and charming at all times.”

There’s a collective groan. For the record, Lance does not appreciate this.

Keith squints at him. “It’s way too early in the morning for you to be this ridiculous.”

“Uh, maybe by your concept of human time,” Lance rights himself. “Like, it might be 8am eastern standard, but we’re literally in deep space, eating green goo, chilling out with a 10,000 year old alien princess. What does 8am even mean anymore, Keith?”

A slice of a glare. “It’s also way too early for existential abstraction of man made concepts.” Keith shoves the mug into Lance’s hand. “Sit down and drink your sludge. I made it for you.”

And that. Well.

Lance doesn’t really know what to make of that, Keith’s hands pulling back, heat radiating in Lance’s palm. He stares down at his own distorted reflection. 

“Are you making fun of me? You’re making fun of me, aren’t you?” Lance points with his free hand. “Shiro, tell Keith to stop making fun of me. It’s rude.”

“Keith, stop making fun of Lance.” Shiro, who’d just wandered in through the door, his attention focused solely on the handscreen he’s restlessly tapping at, speaks in a bored drawl. A _your teenage shenanigans do not amuse me or my edgy haircut_ drawl. “You know he’s delicate.”

Lance’s jaw drops, slamming the mug down on the counter. “How. Dare. I am not delicate, I--”

He whips his hand back, for emphasis, and it catches on the corner of the cabinet. 

Promptly, he collapses to the floor.

“Did that hurt?” Hunk asks. “Because that looked like it hurt.”

“S’what he gets for flailing around like that,” Pidge snorts.

The heel of Keith’s boot nudges the center of his back. There’s clear mirth in his voice as he asks, “You okay, man?”

“Is it broken?” Lance whimpers, extending his limp, wounded hand. “Give it to me straight, Keith.”

Pidge’s tiny voice floats from across the room, _“Ch’yeah, good luck with that one--ow, Hunk.”_

He’s not expecting gentle, half gloved hands to take his own, to turn it over carefully. He’s not expecting the heat of those hands, the brush of a thumb over the tender inside of his palm to ignite every last molecule in his being. Lance thinks, _it is way, way too early for him to be this close._

Dark eyes bore into his. “We may have to amputate.”

Keith is funny. He might be so funny purely because Lance never expects it, this bone dry bite. It shocks a laugh straight from his gut, hand and heart throbbing in sync. Keith pulls him to his feet, and it’s familiar enough that Lance’s vibrating cells start to chill, even as the pad of a thumb sweeps over his knuckles before letting go. _It’s too early,_ Lance thinks, _for these electromagnetic waves._

“Paladins, excellent work this morning,” Allura sweeps into the room, suited up with her hair undone. “You continue to impress me with your teamwork and progress!”

“We’re definitely coming together.” Shiro stands with his hands on his hips. Close together, they’re an impressive sight. An impressive, massive, impossibly beautiful sparkling spectacle of a sight. A car crash of like, total babe-itude. Lance wants to looks away because it’s almost physically painful to keep staring, but he can’t. 

“More than that,” she gushes. “You’re becoming legends in the making.”

That causes Shiro’s gaze to dip to the side, narrow. Allura is all for team building, for encouragement and praise. In equal turn, she’s firm and doesn’t mince her words, or over extend compliments. Her sudden turn for a sugary sweet tone and overzealous bite makes Lance’s molars ache. Shiro asks, “Is there...something you wanted, Princess?”

A coy head tilt. “Well, now that you’ve mentioned it.”

-

It’s not what Lance expects. It never really is. Honestly, nothing has been what he expected ever since he fell down a hole in a cave in the middle of the desert and found a giant blue robot lion that was linked to his thoughts because of some ancient alien prophecy type schtick. His life, man. His life.

“So,” Lance stares at the hologram projection before several pairs of watching eyes, his arms crossed. “It’s a plate.”

“It’s the Discus,” Allura corrects, firmly, white eyebrow twitching. “It’s over two million years old, and has been passed down through the royal bloodline from generation to generation. It’s made of pure quarak, hand carved by the masters of the original order, and has been a symbol to my people of strength and unity.”

The hologram dish rotates slowly, faintly green and transparent.

“So what you’re saying is,” Lance says, “it’s a fancy plate.”

There’s a hefty sigh, Allura bringing a hand to her head. Shiro moves in, swiftly. “You’re saying you want us to find it?”

“No,” she says. “I need you to steal it.”

-

When Lance first joined the Garrison it took a hot minute for him to realize that he couldn’t just hop into the cockpit and turbo throttle into parts unknown with nothing but ground at his back and infinite black in front of him. He’ll never forget that night him and his mom stayed up, packing minivan together ‘til three in the morning, knowing full well they had to leave by seven for Lance’s orientation, her hair slipping out of the knotted bun it'd been twisted into. It was still warm out then, the twins were passed out on the porch swing. His sister was inside with her the radio on, singing along. Everyone else was in bed, and it was just the two of them, they way it wasn’t very often. And she’d said around a cigarette, the ones she swore she didn’t smoke anymore, _It might be flight school, baby, but it’s still school. You have to apply yourself._

She was, as always, right. There was a lot of math, a lot of science, a lot of note taking and all nighters and dangerous dependencies on battery acid energy drinks. More than that, it was drive and dedication to do something more than just gain a title or land a cool job. It was something beyond daring, something beyond guts. It was selflessness. If you weren’t willing to give yourself to your training, to your cause, to your team, you wouldn’t be a pilot. Lance didn’t get that for a long time. There are still moments he really struggles with it, but considering he has had to deal with some absolutely ridiculous, literally _out of this world_ nonsense, he thinks his learning curve must be pretty darn impressive. 

Still, it wasn’t until a series of failing marks and the late arrival of the most obnoxious and infuriating and fashionably challenged recruit the Garrison had ever seen jump started Lance’s resolution. Said person will remain unnamed. Point is, if he was going to be a fighter pilot, he was going to be the best, and he was going to kick formal education’s sorry gluteus maximus from here to the asteroid belt (this had been his train of thought pre-introduction to wormholes. Now the asteroid belt might as well be around the corner from his house.)

Point being, he’s sat through a lot of astoundingly boring lessons. The more and more Allura talks about the fancy-plate-disc-whatever, the faster Lance is fading. History was never his strong suit. Facts and theory were all well and good, but at the end of the day Lance is a Man of Action. He’s thinking of having business cards made up.

“When I was young, Altea was in a time of peace. My people excelled in the arts, in sports, in philosophy and science. One of the greatest planets in the universe. And one of the proudest.”

Lance slurps at his energy drink. There are chunks in it. He’s afraid to ask what they’re chunks of, but they’re slightly chewy. They’re growing on him.

“Naturally,” Allura goes on, “we were also...competitive.”

Shiro raises an eyebrow. “Competitive?”

“To simplify hundreds and hundreds of Altean sociocultural history, we liked to engage in a series of bi-annual games with some of the other prospering planets in neighboring solar systems,” she explains. “And our fiercest competitors were the Ya’altissians.”

“Gesundheit,” Lance interjects, reaching forward to steal the rest of Keith’s drink pouch. Keith lets him have it, because the loser’s actually paying attention. 

Allura barely spares a glance in his direction. “As I was saying...the Ya’altissians were a thriving civilization. A gaudy thriving civilization, but thriving nonetheless.”

“Yoooo, shots fired,” he stage whispers to Hunk, who snorts. Bringing the pouch to his mouth, he doesn’t think about Keith’s lips being there first. Nope. Not at all.

Allura went on, “The Ya’altissians and the Alteans were practically evenly matched in every event. If we took the quattro throwing, they stole dynasty ball. If we obliterated them in Havlar, they’d come back and destroy us in the spelling competition.”

Hunk leans in. “Spelling? That’s a...sport?”

“The way we did it,” Allura’s voice is clipped, hands find her hips. “You better believe it was a sport.”

Hunk shrinks back.

She clears her throat. “The prize wasn’t anything spectacular. Just the Discus and the title, but my father...it meant a lot to him. To see his people come together for the sake of being their best, to see his people be so proud when there were many moments in our history where we were not afforded that luxury.”

There’s a pause, everyone in the room hanging on Allura’s word. Coran places a hand on her shoulder, and she reaches up to pat it, a quiet _it’s fine, I’m fine_ before she straightens, shoulders squared. 

“Altea won the 204th Nova Games, shortly before the Galra started their attacks. The Discus and the title rightfully belong to us. The Ya’altissians stole it. They found it in the ruins of our planet and took it, claiming it as their own. It-it’s _ludicrous.”_

Her voice raises to a shout by the end, and it echoes throughout the room. Lance has stopped slurping. He is equal parts mildly terrified and aroused.

“I understand that,” Allura reigns it in, inhaling deeply, eyes shut as she clutches a hand to her collar, “this isn’t exactly part of our mission. The fate of the universe isn’t at stake. At best, this is a huge distraction.”

At least she’s aware, Lance thinks, arms crossed over his chest as he reclines into the couch, eyes flickering over everyone’s faces to try and gauge their expressions. Shiro looks deep in contemplation, hand rubbing at his jaw. Keith is looking to Shiro, waiting for the say-so. The corners of Lance’s mouth tick down. For someone who had such a disciplinary problem, one that literally cost him his career, the fact that Keith seems willing to follow Shiro’s every direction to the ends of the universe is an inconsistency in personality that makes Lance wonder. 

He doesn’t like sitting with those thoughts for too long. They make his skin itch. 

“Whelp.” Lance slaps his hands against his knees, leaning forward. “You never have to try to convince me that petty revenge is a good idea. I’m in.”

A pause, and Keith’s eyes finally pull away from Shiro. He considers Lance for a beat, then shrugs. “Beats sitting around all day waiting for a Galra attack.”

“I’ve always wanted to be part of a heist.” Pidge adjusts her glasses. “I’m in, too.”

“And I have the constant fear that everyone is having fun without me,” Hunk says, scratching absently at his cheek, “So me too, I guess. I’m in. So long there’s like...not a lot of running and even less death.”

Almost simultaneously, all heads turn towards Shiro, standing by the doorway with his arms folded and face set in an expression that doesn’t give an inch of inclination to what might be going on in that duo toned head of his. Lance realizes he’s holding his breath. He thinks Keith is, too.

“We’ll need a plan,” he says, finally, and there’s a collective exhale.

Allura’s eyes glint, half lidded and severe. “Oh. I have a plan.”

-

It’s, again, not what he was expecting.

“So,” Lance says slowly, “it’s a dance.”

A sigh, a hand to the forehead forehead, and Lance might as well be back on earth listening to his mom swear to high heavens that this is the last time she’s driving him and his friends to the mall. “As I explained, it’s the annual Eclipse Banquet held in celebration of the end of the Ya’altissian calendar year.”

“So…it’s a fancy dance.”

She shoots Shiro a look. Dark eyes snap to him. “Lance.”

“Hey! I love dances!” Lance holds his hands up. “You know what dance rhymes with? It rhymes with Lance. Dancin’ Lance, that’s what the boys back home used to call me. You should see some of my sweet moves.”

“No one called you that,” Hunk reminds him. 

"But you can't dispute my sweet moves, can you?"

Shiro outright ignores them. “First things first, we’ll need to decide who’s going in, and how.”

“Way ahead of you.” Coran swipes a hand through the air, pulling up a translucent set of three dimensional blueprints that he spins with a flick of the wrist, layers pulling apart show each floor better. “Princess Allura and one of you will infiltrate the main level as guests. It’s been 10,000 years since an Altean attended one of these events, so as you can imagine, you’ll have to make an entrance.”

“Oh,” Allura’s hands rub together, her eyes lit and unblinking as they seem to see beyond the blueprints. “We’ll show them an entrance all right.”

Lance takes a step behind Shiro. Coran clears his throat. “Yes, well. Ah. We’ll need the others to pose as the staff to gain access to the kitchens, and possibly one of you to--”

“Kitchens?” Hunk leans forward. “We’re talking access to food that’s not green or gooey? Sign me up.”

“Dude, that’s the fastest I’ve ever seen you volunteer for a mission, like, ever.” Lance pauses. “This might be the only time I’ve seen you volunteer of a mission.”

“Banquets mean appetizers, Lance.” Hunk points. “Mini versions of foods on sticks. I don’t think you’re grasping the gravity of this situation. There’s the possibility of tiny alien quiche. Textures we’ve never even dreamed of!”

Shiro peers in closely at the blue prints. “Then Allura and I will go in as guests--”

“Ah, well,” Allura cuts in. “It’s just…”

She lays a hand on his right arm. He looks down at it, at her slim fingers pressing against the metal plates. “Oh.”

“If anyone there even suspects that you’re essentially carrying a Galra weapon into the Eclipse Banquet, of all events.” Her intake of breath is sharp. “It’d be disastrous. None of us would leave with our lives.”

“Right.” Shrio, to his credit, doesn’t even flinch, but the way he steps away from Allura’s touch speaks volumes to Lance. “Pidge is too young to be your escort, and if Hunk really wants to be in the kitchen--”

“Needs,” he interrupts. “Hunk needs to be in the kitchen.”

Pidge waves a hand. “And Pidge’s expertise is better applied to others areas of the mission, regardless of age!”

“Right.” Shiro’s grin is wry. “That leaves--”

Lance lightly pushes Keith out of the way. It’s not his fault the kid’s got no sense of balance and practically topples over into Hunk. Lance clears his throat, winning smile sliding into place, power pose struck, a gentle flick of fringe out of his face. _Sparkle, sparkle._

Allura’s flat glare sticks to him for a pause, then flickers to his left, and she smiles, head tilting with her hands clasped in front of her. “Keith?”

Keith rights himself with gentle support from Hunk, glaring at Lance before turning his full attention back to her. “I’m not really much of a party guy.”

Allura expels all the breath in her body, bridge of her nose pinched between his fingers. “...Lance?”

“Why, Princess,” he slides over to her, singing, “I thought you’d never ask.”

-

“Somehow,” Hunk says, “and I don’t know how...but you did it. You got Allura to ask you out.”

“I knew it was only a matter of time before she fell for my charms,” Lance sings. “And honestly, think about it. How good are we gonna look together at this thing?”

Keith rolls his eyes. “Like she’s an exhausted adult who got stuck babysitting her thirteen year old brother.”

“Now, now, Keith.” Lance pats his shoulder. “No need to be jealous. I’m sure the day will come when some brave soul is dumb enough to ask you out.”

He’s not prepared for the severity of Keith’s glare, or the way he wrenches away from Lance’s touch.

“What’s his major malfunction?” Lance’s face tightens, watching Keith storm off.

“Dude,” Hunk says. “Really?”

“Really what?” Lance asks, and when all Hunk does turn his attention to Pidge, the two of them talking about radio waves in deep space, he throws his hand up. “Fine! Whatever!”

He spins, about to make his own dramatic exit to go find Allura, so they can spend some quality time planning, talking, laughing, leaning in closer and closer before they realize just how close they really are, and Lance won't think of anyone else but her. That's when he sees Keith and Shiro.

He sees how relaxed Keith becomes when he talks to Shiro like this. He sees Keith melt out of his rigid, brooding mold and into something softer, something younger where his cheeks dimple and eyes shine. He knows they knew each other before, or at least he's guessed as much. Neither of them really talk about their lives back on Earth, and Lance doesn't care enough to ask ( _he doesn't_ ). And Lance would like to point out that he and Keith totally have their own history, too. One Keith apparently doesn’t remember, which really, that just makes Lance feel stellar. He puts so much energy into being noticed, into being big and loud and overflowing, and his existence still falls like a footnote in the grand epic odyssey of everyone else’s lives.

Which is just so, so not cool.

Like now, they’re leaning against the far wall, just talking, and smiling these matching gentle smiles, a sharp contract from the borderline vicious glare Keith just tried to cut Lance down with. They look unreal, untouchable caricatures of once-were people, too pretty and too put together, speaking too low for Lance to hear, about things Lance probably doesn’t know about.

Spur of the moment decision, Lance tries to do a backflip off the couch. Never mind that he’s never done one before. That’s inconsequential.

Luckily, instead of breaking his neck, he just lands on Hunk, and they both wind up in a heap of limbs on the floor.

“Dude,” Hunk’s groan rises up from the tile, “why?”

“Are you two okay?” Shiro’s pulling Lance up with one arm and helping Hunk a moment later with the other. Hunk dusts himself off, and there’s a dark red spot on his jaw where Lance thinks his own knee might’ve hit. Guilt drops his heart down to the bottom floor of his gut like a freight elevator. Shiro’s eyes, less concerned now, narrow. “Lance, what were you thinking?”

“Obviously,” Keith’s voice drawls from behind Shiro as he comes closer, “he wasn’t. Not like that’s anything new.”

“I’m sorry, Hunk,” Lance says, wincing, because he definitely pulled something in his neck. “I’m really sorry, I don’t--I just--”

“I’m fine,” Hunk tries to tell him, but he’s rubbing at his jaw. “Really. This is nothing compared to the time you convinced me to practice MMA with you in the dorm basements and knocked my head into the corner of the foosball table.”

Lance winces. “Which I am also still really sorry about.”

“You can’t pull stunts like that.” Shiro towers over him. “You’re not only going to wind up hurting yourself, but the people around you.”

Lance is wrong. He knows he’s in the wrong. He should just apologize and promise it won’t happen again, and make sure it never happens again. But that’s not what comes out of his big, fat mouth. Instead he says, “Keith’s reckless all the time. You never yell at him for it. Heck, you all praise him for it.”

“Don’t,” Keith snaps, pushing around Shiro, “bring me into this.”

“Don’t tell me what to do!” Oh, because that makes sense. Nice one, Lance.

“The both of you.” Shiro forcefully steps between them. “You’re adults. Act like it.”

But Lance isn’t. Lance is immature and dumb and speaks without thinking and all he wanted was for someone to pay attention to him. _Well, you got what you wanted, didn’t you?_ the tiny voice in his head asks. It sounds like Pidge. And another says, _Apologize._ And it sounds like his mom. Which--

He can’t deal with right now.

“Whatever.” He pushes himself between Keith and Shiro, storming out the door and towards somewhere far away from everyone.

-

He used to daydream imaginary conversations between himself and Takashi Shirogane.

In these daydreams, it was something usually along the lines of Shiro visiting the Garrison and catching Lance acing a flight exam. Shiro comes up to him after to congratulate him, to tell Lance how impressed he is, to shake his hand and invite him out for dinner. All the while, Lance is funny without being overly goofy. He’s smart without being pretentious. He's perfectly measured but still himself, and it's easy and never awkward and Shiro laughs, making an effort to touch Lance during pauses of their long, long late night conversations. In later daydreams, there may or may not be a smooch or two, which Lance, now that he knows Shiro, finds privately humiliating.

So when Shiro corners him on his way to the showers later that night (after he’s skipped dinner to hide out in his room, surviving on the juice packs and protein bars he’s stowed under his bed), Lance has a small meltdown. Even now as teammates, he and Shiro are rarely ever alone. And when they are, it’s not the deep and long conversations Lance used to spend hours fantasizing about when he should’ve been paying attention during aerodynamics theory. It’s usually, _you did well today, Lance._ And, _pass the goo, please._ And, _stop fighting with Keith over the intercom, it’s distracting to everyone._

He meets Shiro’s eyes, he knows this isn’t going to be one of those casual conversations. He knows, with every tense fiber of his being, that this is going to capital-s Suck.

“I’m sorry,” he says immediately, breathless, “I won’t do it anymore. I don’t know why I did it. I just--”

“If you don’t know why you did it,” Shiro asks, “then how are you supposed to stop yourself from doing it again?”

Lance’s throat tightens. 

There's a heavy human hand is on Lance’s shoulder. “I can see you’re struggling with a lot right now. I know you miss your home. I miss mine, too, trust me. So we can talk about those things.” A pause. “We can talk about whatever you’re feeling.”

Currently, he feels like he might cry. And really, what does he have to cry about? Shiro was held prisoner for a year and forced to fight for his life, to hurt and be hurt. They took his arm, and he’s standing there letting Lance know it’s okay to be homesick.

“And Keith is stubborn, and I know he doesn’t seem like he’s the easiest person to talk to,” Shiro says, “I promise if you genuinely try, he'll listen."

Lance blinks. “Why would I talk to Keith?”

Shiro gives him a steady look. “Why do you think you would talk to Keith?”

Lance’s face heats. Which is ridiculous. 

A pat to the arm. “Let's cool it with the acrobatics, though. But if you really want to learn how to do a backflip, I can show you on the training deck."

A winning white smile of impossibly straight teeth. Lance runs his tongue over the awkward angle of his right canine as Shiro heads off to his room.

Lance stays in the shower for as long as he can stand it, skin pink and pruny, and thinks about the first time he met Keith.

-

_The name’s Lance._

Dark eyes stared up into his. The New Kid that everyone couldn't seem to stop talking about. The new pilot. Crouched against the wall of the gymnasium, he said, _Okay._

A frown. _Manners dictate that when someone introduces themselves to you, you should, y’know, introduce yourself back._

A pause, then. _Keith._

He snorted. _You don’t look like much of a Keith._ Because the guy didn’t. He looked like he should have some ridiculous YA fantasy novel antagonist name like Axel or Magnus or Cashew--

_Well, you don’t look like much of a pilot._

Lance flushed a horrible, humiliated red. The same color red that the failing mark on his aerodynamics theory exam boasted, crumpled up in his book bag. _Buddy, what is your issue--_

_You’re standing on my jacket._

A yank, and Lance’s world tilted, feet swept out from underneath him. He crashed back against the floor with a strangled yelp and windmilling arms. There was an echo of laughter from the older girls over by the training mats, and there was Hunk's face hovering over his, shadowed with concern. _Dude, you okay?_

Vaulting upright, he yelled after Keith’s back, _Yeah, that’s right. Walk away!_

And Keith never even spared a glance. And he wouldn’t, no matter what Lance tried to do to get Keith to see him. And he hated Keith for that. He still hates him. Except they’re friends now, so when he hates Keith, it makes the center of his chest pull with a deep ache that even though Lance is still just a kid, feels centuries old, so mangled and heavy it doesn’t feel like it can be real. But sometimes, between deep space and green goo and the distinct absence of pizza, it’s the realest thing Lance can hold onto, so he holds on for dear life.

After that, there were months and months of Lance staring at the nape of Keith’s neck, the uncombed curls against pale skin. Lance would stare, heat deep in his gut that he channeled into determination. Determination to be better, to make everyone see him. To make Keith acknowledge him as an equal. He aced his next aerodynamics test. And the one after that. He made Dean's list. His mom called him, and even though she swore she wasn't, she was crying when she told him how proud she was of him.

He tries not to think about how all about how all of that goes to waste if he dies out here in deep space. He tries not to think about his family never knowing what happened to him if that’s how this all ends. He tries not to think about anything past the stars he can see.

-

Recently, he’s been finding himself on one of the ship’s observation decks, staring out into that soundless void with his chest clenching and his arms around his knees. Finding himself, and then losing himself piece by piece, looking from start to star like they're going to spell something out for him.

There’s the whoosh of the deck doors opening. Lance turns his head, in time to see Keith’s silhouette outlined with the warm lighting of the hallway in contrast to the shadowed blue of the deck.

“Wow,” Hunk says, coming up behind Keith. “You were right. He is here.”

“Told you.” Keith hands find his pockets, and he leads the way into the room with Hunk and Pidge behind him.

Lance hugs his knees tighter to his chest, feeling caught. Feeling like he has to fight. “What? What do you want? I’m trying to be one with the universe right now.”

“Coran says we’re wormholing soon,” Pidge plunks down next to him on the floor. “Thought we’d come warn you. And also come make sure you weren’t being weird and emo.”

“I’m not being weird and emo.”

“Dude.” Hunk sits on the other side of Pidge. “Sometimes you get weird and emo.”

“I do not,” Lance insists, but a bloom of warmth in the center of his chest swoops in a vicious right hook when he realizes he wanted this. He wanted someone to come and find him in the dark, even though he’d come here with the express purpose of being completely alone. It makes him think he actually has no idea what he wants.

Keith rolls his eyes and sits down next to him. They’re not going to apologize for before. Either of them. Lance is fine with this. He's content just to star gaze and pretend certain things never really happened. He sighs, turning his attention upwards and beyond.

Black never existed before he saw the black of deep space.

He thought he knew black. Black was the color of all his favorite shirts when he was thirteen. Black was his basement bedroom back home when night settled into the corners the moment he hit the lights, eyes trying to adjust. Black was the glossy hair of a boy who sat in front of him in almost all his classes, no subtle highlights of dark browns or reds. Black was the polish he sometimes painted onto his fingernails, until he’d accumulated so many demerits for breaking the Garrison’s dress code he practically lived in early morning detention.

All of it was nothing compared to the black of space. There were moments where the pinpoints of starlight were the lit windows of his neighborhood, a distant glow of reassurance. They tell him, _You are not alone._

He can feel their body heat. He can can hear Pidge's quiet exhale. Smell the soapy scent of Hunk's deodorant. Keith's shoulder brushing against his own, and Lance remembers. He doesn't know how he could forget something so undeniable, the existence of these people who crowd around him in the dark.

There’s a split in the knee of Keith’s pants where the black denim gave up, a crescent moon of skin Lance has never seen before, and he can’t look away from until he hears, “How’s your hand?”

Lance jerks his gaze up. “My what?” 

A beat. “Your hand. You know, that thing you hurt yesterday and then proceeded to collapse to the floor afterwards, sobbing?”

“Oh,” Lance makes the shape of the sound with his mouth. “Okay, one--I wasn’t sobbing, I was venting. And two, it hurt bad, Keith. Real bad. My left hand! I do everything with this hand.” He waves it in front of Keith’s face before coming in close to whisper, “Everything.”

Pidge’s _ew_ can be head behind him.

“Lemme see,” Keith’s fingers slide between his own. He drops their joined hands, and they settle between them, against the floor. “Seems to be functioning normally.”

What is Lance supposed to say to that? 

Hunk’s voice drifts in, “Smooth as space goo-- _ow,_ Pidge.”

He can feel them. Those electromagnetic waves. The sounds of the their black void of a universe, reverberating in their joined hands. Lance can’t say a word.

“Lance.” 

Allura’s voice makes Lance yank his hand back reflexively, but if she saw anything she doesn’t let it distract her as she swishes across the floor. “No time for stargazing.” She grabs him by the wrist and tugs him to his feet. “We’ve got work to do.”

He swallows, letting himself be dragged. “Work?”

“I have only a handful of days to take you from…” she trails off, pausing to let her gaze dip. “From well, _you,_ to a stately, cultured gentleman of high society.”

“Hey, I am plenty cultured.” Lance pulls his hand free. “I read. I had Beethoven's Fifth as my ringtone for several years.”

“Yeah,” Hunk scoffs, crossing his arms, “A fart-noise version of Beethoven’s Fifth.”

Lance sucks at his teeth. “I fail to see how that invalidates my cultured-ness.”

“While I’m sure that’s plenty impressive on earth,” Allura says, cautiously, even as Pidge groans _trust me, it’s not._ “It’s less about intelligence and taste, and more about a certain,” she searches for the word, rolling her hand through the air. “Effortless sophistication.” 

“Girl, I’ve got buckets of effortless sophistication,” he boasts. “But, if you’re just looking for an excuse to spend time with me, I can’t say I blame you.”

She drops her head, mumbling, “I did this to myself. I have no one to blame but myself.”

Keith pats her shoulder gently, like he understands, or something. Which. Rude. So rude.

-

And no, before anyone asks, it doesn’t go the way Lance expects it to.

Allura shoves him away, hopping up and down on her good foot as she holds the other. “I thought you said you could dance!”

“I can dance.” Lance stomps. “This? This is not dancing. This is some bizarre mating ritual meant to reduce everyone’s feet to bloody stumps by the end of the night.”

“Dude,” Keith’s voice calls our form across the training deck. “Gross.”

The Ya’altissians style of formal dancing requires a lot of twists, turns, specific steps where feet have to be angled just so, void of a single moment where partners aren’t pivoting, coordinating, touching. And not just holding, not just contact. Touching. Deliberate touching, fingers sliding across arms and leaving raised flesh in their wake, palms pressed against the dip of a lower back, flush bodies moving in tandem. “It a dance of unity. It’s meant to show the cooperation of two bodies. Their ability to become one,” Coran had explained. “It’s a very intimate experience.”

Lance is acutely aware of how intimate it is. He’s acutely aware of Allura’s body, her movements, and her growing frustration every time Lance missteps. The best blunders result in a pause of movement, while the worst result in trampled feet, bruised shins, and one unfortunate elbow to the neck.

He’s also very, very aware that Keith has been watching them from his spot against the wall for the past hour now. It’s annoying to say the very least, but Lance know tons of people will be watching the two of them at the actual banquet. What’s one mere set of dark, probing, judging eyes watching him fumble around? 

What they are, apparently, is enough, because Lance can’t focus. He has quite possibly the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen in his life in his arms, pressed up against him, putting her hands all over him, and all he can think about is they half lidded stare tunneling into him from the far side of the training deck, the tilt of his mouth as he smirks and snarks.

It’s been a long afternoon.

“And the running Keith Commentary is not helping!” Lance points an accusatory finger.

Keith holds his hands up in silent surrender, but his dumb mouth is slanted in the grossest, smuggest smirk. Lance can practically feel the smoke coming out of his ears, entire face burning.

“Let’s,” Allura says, sighing deeply, “take a break for now. We’ll pick back up with this later.”

She steps away from him, and it’s all Lance can do to keep himself from making grabby hands at her. Coran shoots him a look reassuring look that winces into something more pitying than encouraging before he follows Allura towards the kitchens. Lance heaves out a heavy breath, shoulders sagging as he runs a hand down his sweaty face.

A glint catches the corner of his eye. He turns.

“Here.” Keith holds out a juice pouch. “It’s the one with the chunks in it.”

He wants to be petty and like, slap it out of Keith’s hand for being such a jerk. But. He’s thirsty.

“Thanks.” Lance accepts with one hand, and with the other he takes the hem of his shirt and uses it to blot the sweat from his forehead. “Dancing? Dude, it’s hard.”

“It looks,” Keith clears his throat, “hard.”

He sighs, lowering his shirt. “I don’t get what I’m doing wrong.”

“I’d think that’d be a pretty familiar state of being for you.”

“Oh ha ha.” He gives Keith’s shoulder a shove, smile wry. “Yes, another round of everyone's favorite honored pastime, Kicking Lance While He’s Down. Please stand for the seventh inning stretch.”

He’s just joking, but there’s a flash of a wince across Keith’s face. Then there are hands on Lance’s hands, warm and gloved, bringing them up. “Here.”

“Uh.” Lance’s throat tightens, staring down at where they’re joined. “What’re you--”

“You keep taking too many steps when you get to turns,” Keith explains, pressing in close.

“Dude.” Lance tries to shuffle back. “Dude.”

“I’ve been watching you for the past hour,” Keith’s hands brand into Lance’s lower back through his t-shirt. “I know what I’m doing. Trust me.”

At those last words, his eyes flicker up and connect with Lance’s in a heavy glance, and it’s like someone’s opened the airlock in Lance’s lungs. They’re teammates, and everything they have is based on trust, but there’s the enormity of fighting evil, of fighting for each other, and then there’s this. This softer trust. The trust of letting someone so close. The helplessness of having no one left to fight, having nowhere to go except into someone’s arms.

He’s pulled in by the waist. Lance swallows, the simple friction of cotton between them as their chests pressing together, flush. Keith keeps a quiet count as he leads, and Lance feels boneless, weightless, and still with all this -less, he’s so sure never felt more in his life. He knows, in the way he knows space is black and soundless, in the way he knows summer is hot and life is short, that Keith is strong. But it’s one thing to have this fact catalogued in his memory bank, and another to feel Keith move him. And, of freakin' course, Keith picks up the whole routine like he's been practicing for hours, because apparently he's a natural at everything.

“And spin,” Keith pivots on his heel, letting Lance unfurl from him with a snap.

“Ah!” the sounds slip out of him, because he has no idea what he’s doing. With his feet or with the gaping sucking feeling inside of his chest. “Ahhh!”

But Keith reels him in by their tethered arms, and Lance yoyo’s right back, a final dip to end the routine.

Lance lets out a breathless laugh, escaping between grinning teeth. “We did it. Holy crow, we did it.”

He’s about to request the most epic of high fives when their noses brush, Keith’s bangs sticking to Lance’s sweaty forehead. He can feel Keith’s breath, the rise and fall of his chest, deep from all the twisting and turning. Lance swallows with delayed realization. They’re close. And he might, against all things holy and right, be moving closer with a burn of intent itching at the back of his throat.

“Marvelous!” Coran’s applause cuts through the still air. Keith launches himself backwards, and Lance barely has a split second to right his center of gravity to keep himself from falling flat on his back. “Bravo!”

“See?” Allura steps out from behind Coran. “It’s not that difficult. Do that at the Banquet, and we’ll be fine.”

“Right,” Lance echoes, his heart screaming inside his chest. “Fine.”

She holds out her hands. “Let’s do one round together, and then we’ll get you fitted into your outfit.”

He blinks at her, parroting, “Outfit?”

-

“Stop. Laughing.”

“I-I can’t,” Keith wheezes, banging his fist against the couch cushion. “I’m _crying.”_

Ya’altissian formal wear. Is a joke.

“The ruffles are a symbol of status,” Coran explains. “The aristocracy of the outer ring planets are well known for their elaborate sense of fashion. In fact, this is considered rather subtle.”

“Subtle?!” Lance shouts. “I look like a pile of whipped cream!”

“We can maybe do away with one one the layers around the collar.” Allura hums, hand to her chin, deep in thought. “But the lace cuffs have to stay.”

Keith falls backwards, cackling. 

“Buddy, you do not get to laugh at my clothes right now.” Lance whips around. “You wear a belt over your shirt!”

Keith’s smile dissolves almost instantly. “It’s a utility belt,” he snaps. “To hold my knives.”

Lance cocks an eyebrow, arms folded (or, well, he tries to. The pompoms that are currently around his wrists make it extremely difficult). “Like that makes it so much better. Also, let’s not forget that your signature look is a cropped jacket.”

“Well, if I wore a long jacket, then no one would be able to see the knives on my utility belt.”

“The both of you.” Shiro sounds more tired than mad. “Knock it off. Coran, do we have uniforms for Hunk and Keith?”

“Yeah.” Lance feels a smirk tick up the corner of his mouth. “Let’s see their uniforms.”

-

Life? Life is unfair.

“It’s a little tight.” Keith twists to look at himself from the back in the full length mirror propped against the wall. “I don’t know if I can fight in these.”

“You’ll have to make it work.” Shiro hands him his waist coat. “This is all we have.”

Unlike Lance’s ruffle and lace afflicted garb, doused in a vomit of blues and oranges, Keith’s server uniform is all neutral and classy. Allura had palmed some sort of gel into Keith’s fringe, parting it at the side, the rest of his hair scraped back into a small, soft ponytail that Lance has worst compulsion to reach out and touch.

And yes, Keith is right. It’s very tight. Lance thought Keith’s regular pants were tight (ridiculously tight), but these--these pants look like they were painted on. Every curve is on blatant display, combined with the well fitted white shirt and black vest. When Lance finally tears his eyes away, they meet Hunk’s steady, knowing gaze from a few feet away. Hunk’s chef uniform is crisp and well fitted, just like his smug judgement.

He’s never told Hunk. He’s never told anyone. Lance likes to think it’s because it’s really not anyone’s business, if he y’know, likes boys. He doesn't have to explain himself to anyone, he doesn’t have to put a label on himself for the benefit of other people’s understanding. But he knows that while that’s definitely a part of the reason, it’s mostly because saying the words out loud is hard. It’s too real, too permanent. He can’t take words back once he’s said them. For someone with almost no filter, having these words constantly anchored in his throat feels like something close to constantly suffocating.

But he thinks someday, if he thinks he can say it right, and if he feels like it’s time, Hunk will be the person he tells. Because Hunk pretty much already knows, and is his best friend, and is the most understanding person Lance has ever met. He saw Lance that first day at the Garrison’s orientation, and instead of scoffing when Lance told him he’d be a fighter pilot, Hunk’d said, _Cool. I’m going to be an engineer. Maybe we’ll be on the same team!_ Hunk is quite possibly Lance’s favorite human being after his mom.

Lance can’t think about her right now, though.

“How are we, security wise?” Shiro asks.

“ID’s forged, surveillance hacked, communicators synced and ready to go.” Pidge spins onto the scene. “You and me will be in a ship we’ll dock behind the nearest moon and serve as the best last minute communications hub this galaxy has ever seen.”

Shiro’s face practically melts into the fondest expression. “We get the Discus, and we get out as quickly as possible,” he says. “Lance, make sure you know your cover story frontways and backways.”

Lance salutes. “And sideways and slantways.” 

“Good.” Shiro gives a short nod. “I want everyone to get a good night’s rest. Tomorrow, we’ll head out at…”

As Shiro starts talking at length about things they have already discussed at length, Lance decides it is as good a time as any to get himself out of these awful, constricting, faintly ammonia smelling clothes. He yanks at the laces, he pulls at the collar and cuffs, unraveling himself. When he finally gets the white undershirt over his head and stands up straight, he meets a steady, clearly annoyed glare from across the room. He narrows his eyes at Keith, mouthing _what?_

Keith snatches his jacket off the back of the couch, barging through the group towards the door. Lance watches, jaw hanging in disbelief, because what?

When he turns back, Shiro has his arms crossed, fingers drumming against his metal arm expectantly.

“Okay, I admit. I am an instigator at heart.” Lance holds a hand to his chest. “But this time I legit didn’t do or say anything.”

Shiro sighs, a long, drawn out sort of sigh that make Lance think of his mother’s well worn lungs trillions of miles away, past this galaxy and the next, past Pluto, past the sun, past the atmosphere, past Gardenia Street, past his front porch. He wipes a hand down his face. “Just...put a shirt on, Lance.”

-

After ditching the frilly duds and sliding back into the good ol’ jeans a t-shirt, he follows Hunk into the kitchen, half because he knows Hunk will let Lance rant at him about Keith without rolling his eyes or calling him melodramatic (or worse, obsessed), and half because he knows he’ll probably score some decent snackage out of the deal.

“Honestly!” Lance throws his hands up in the air, perched on the edge of the counter as Hunk rummages through the cabinets. “How the hell was he the coolest guy in our class?”

Hunk’s head pops up, one eyebrow raised, and says slowly, “He wasn’t cool. Like at all.”

“That’s what I’m saying!” Lance jams his hands under his armpits. “I don’t get why he was so popular. Probably just because he’s like...the super hot bad boy type.”

“You think he’s super hot?”

“Well, objectively speaking.” Lance’s face pricks with heat. “He’s got like, nice skin. Or whatever.”

“Nice,” Hunk echoes, “skin?”

“And soulful eyes and glossy hair and his face is like, really proportionate.” Lance’s hands flew as he spoke. “Objectively.”

“Dude, I don’t think you know what that word means.” Hunk rubs absently at the back of his neck. “And like, Keith? Wasn’t popular. Like at all. Like not even a little. A lot of people thought he was weird. I didn’t even know the guy could smile until like, two weeks ago?”

“I’m,” Lance says, “not following.”

“He was just super focused on flying, and you know how he was. When something set him off the whole class got derailed. He never ate with any of us, he never came back to the basement lounges to relax--no one really liked him, everyone avoided him to avoid being on the professors’ bad sides. And he definitely wasn’t popular.”

“Dude,” Lance crosses his arms. “Were you even there? Or do you have some kind of very specific amnesia from eating too much green goo?”

Hunk bulges. “Do you?”

“I--” Lance holds a finger up, mouth open, his memory scrambling to conjure up images of Keith surrounded by fawning girls, of Keith powwing around in the gymnasium with the older cadets, of Keith earning praise and respect every where he turned. “But he--”

“I mean, now I think he’s great.” Hunk shrugs. “Y’know, he’s my teammate, my brother, a great guy when you get to know him. But back then I didn’t really know him. No one did.”

Lance wants to, ridiculously enough, argue. To say, _I knew him._

His lips thin into a hard seam. Hunk whirlwinds around the kitchen, and the scent of mouthwatering food and the sound of Hunk’s endless stream of _and of course it was the triphiloid compressor like duh how could I have missed that, that’s like engineering 101,_ and the coiled pit of Lance’s stomach unfurls. He closes his eyes and let’s Hunk’s voice and food take him to a sun soaked kitchen where all the windows are open and the radio is on, welcoming soon-to-be-summer.

-

They touch down on a nearby planet inhabited by these dinosaur looking koalas (or maybe they’re more like koala looking dinosaurs) who speak in clicks. They’re welcoming enough when they realize Coran, unbelievably, is fluent in their tongue. “I was top of my class in Blarek based languages during my time at the academy,” he supplies as an explanation, puffing out his chest. “Very difficult languages to master. This particular dialect is infused with some turn of the millennia colloquialisms and accents that are almost impossible to replicate. Luckily--”

“Why are we here again?” Lance asks.

Coran deflates. “Part of the island was purchased to house an underground storage unit for some of the queen’s more...diplomatic outfits.”

Lance stares.

“We’re here for Allura’s dress,” Shiro reminds him. “Why don’t you go find Keith? I haven’t seen him since we touched down.”

“Why can’t Hunk go find him?” Lance asks. He doesn’t want to seem too hype to go find Keith, even though he’s already standing, getting ready to make the trek down to the woods.

“Because.” Shiro is doing that towering thing again. He's pretty good at it, though Lance doubts it would be as effective if it weren't for The Biceps. “I asked you.”

He holds his hands up in surrender, and pivots on his heel.

The planet is most forest, patches of sunlight falling through the canopy of trees as he loops back around the ship He inhales. Wet dirt. He never realized it’d be a smell he missed so much, and thinks he should definitely convince Hunk to join him in a camp out later.

When he finds Keith, he’s stooped over some sort of motorized hover scooter that the dinokoalas use to jet around their planet from island to island. A more compact version of that hoverbike Keith was zipping around on, that night when this whole ordeal began. That feels, in the moment, like eons ago, Lance's memory arching back past solar systems, past nebulas, past robot lions and flying castles and alien princesses who pull at his ugly human ears. Keith's jacket, which has been through it with all of them, is shucked to the side, not far from the open tool box, the small clearing littered with...junk, as far as Lance can tell. 

“Yo, what’s good?"

Keith startles, the wrench tumbling out of his hands and clattering against the open engine block before hitting the ground, a string of swears harmonizing with it.

Lance slides over, smirking. “Scared ya, huh?”

“No,” Keith lies, with a hand clutching at his shirt over his heart. Lance leans in, trying to see something special in the mishmash of wires and bolts and stuff Hunk and Pidge would probably salivate over. As for Lance, there’s a reason he wanted to be a fighter pilot and not an engineer.

This was probably one of the myriad of reasons Keith is “technically” a better pilot than him. Lance isn’t a fan of messing with techie stuff unless it’s for the express purpose of making it explode. He can grasp the basics, but the rest honestly bores him to tears. What good is theory if you're never going to apply it? 

“Was there something you wanted?” Keith’s glare cuts through his thoughts, and for a second Lance’s gaze dips to the hollow of Keith’s throat, glossy with sweat. 

He blinks, righting his gaze. “Just wanted to see how my numero uno dance partner was doing.”

That seems to melt some of the tension in Keith’s face, his shoulders, too. He stoops to pick up the wrench he dropped, kneeling next to the scooter. “Found this junkyard. Figured I’d make myself useful for a little while ‘til we leave.”

“Uh huh,” Lance levers himself up onto the rusted over hood of a some kind of submarine. “Didn’t realize you were such a handyman.”

A shrug. “When I was in the desert, I had to maintain my cabin and my bike. I know the basics.”

“He fixes things, he dances,” Lance sings, “is there anything Cadet Keith can’t do?”

“Shut up,” he snorts, and gives Lance’s shoulder a shove. 

“Seriously,” Lance is really only like, 20% jealous as he says, “this is why all the ladies at the Garrison used to swoon over you.”

That earns him a strange, fixed stare. “You been hittin’ those juice packs a little too hard, man?”

“No,” Lance pauses, then, “Okay, _yes,_ but the chewy chunks are really addictive. Also, this false modesty schtick? Not fooling me. Not one bit.”

Keith turns around to the scooter, facing away. “It’s not false modesty.” 

“Uh, yeah it is. Stop trying to pretend like you weren’t super popular in flight school.”

Keith’s back works underneath his shirt, shoulders and arms moving, the clang and groan of metal on metal. “What’s your definition of popular?”

“Like, everyone thought you were really cool and wanted to be your friend and all the girls thought you were cute,” Lance pressed. “Y’know, classically popular.”

“Oh.” Keith reaches for the grease smeared rag hanging off the edge of his open toolbox. “Then no, not really. Or at all.”

“What?” 

“I mean,” Keith says, turning, toweling the grease off his forearms. “If you remember correctly, I kind of had an anger management issue.”

“Yeah, it made you like, the quintessential bad boy. Most people find that super hot.”

A raised eyebrow. “Did you find it hot?”

“Objectively!”

He says objectively, but when Keith is standing there in front of him with that black shirt and those gloves, covered in oil and everything smells like heavy metal, like the garage on a summer afternoon, his hair scraped back into a tiny bun with that smug, smug grin dimpling his left cheek--

Well, Lance feels anything but objective. He clears his throat, and it breaks the moment, Keith’s eyes eyes darting away he scrubs harder at his skin.

“You were the one,” Keith finally says, distractedly twisting the oil off his fingers, “who was friends with everyone. Like you could just go up and start a conversation with anyone you wanted. You’d invite them off base and to your dorm to watch movies and order food like it was no big deal.”

Lance frowns. “Because it wasn’t? That’s normal.”

“Yeah, for you.” Keith throws the rag back at the toolbox. “You’re just one of those people who acts like it’s so easy. I couldn’t--even if I’d wanted to--”

The corner of his mouth tugs up. “So you do remember me?”

“Yeah,” Keith says so simply, like it costs him nothing to admit, “I do.”

There’s a bead of sweat that’s slowly dripping down Keith’s temple. Lance traces his bottom lip with his tongue, feeling the dampness between his own shoulder blades, under his arms, at his lowerback.

“Do you wanna,” Lance starts to ask, and he’s not even sure what he’s asking, just that he knows he wants Keith to say yes, “maybe…”

Something whizzes past his face, and he jerks back, falling against the ground with a wail as Keith launches into a power stance with his knife drawn, bellowing, “Who’s there?”

“It’s just me,” a voice says from above. There’s a rustling in the trees, and Pidge falls from a wobbling branch, leaves stuck in sandy hair, smile impossibly big. “Check what I found! It’s like a crossbow meets mega slingshot--all in one compact and convenient package. I call it,” she brandishes her arm, “the Pidgebow.”

“What’d you even shoot at me?” Lance jerks his head from side to side.

A shrug. “Some kind of tree nut.”

“Pidge,” Keith’s voice is steady, “You could take someone’s eye out with that thing.”

“Yeah.” Lance pulls at his bottom lids. “And I have beautiful eyes. Keith, tell Pidge I have beautiful eyes.”

Pidge laughs. “Yeah, tell me, Keith.”

Lance looks over, and Keith’s back is facing them, shoulders hunched as he throws stuff back into his toolbox.

“Your retinas can relax,” Pidge pulls his attention back forward again. “I’m nothing if not a great shot. Check it. Red leaf in the big knotted tree.”

The nut zooms through the air and hits its intended target. Whatever indignation that’s been wedged between Lance’s teeth is pushed out with a rush of awe. “YO! I wanna try!”

“Blue Paladin. Warrior of the universe. Defender of good. Do you swear...” Pidge undoes the straps around her wrist. “To treat the Pidgebow with honor and respect, and to make some truly gnarly shots?”

Lance holds his hand up, placing the other on the Pidgebow. “Oh, the gnarliest.”

It’s not until he and Pidge have shot off every nut they could find that Lance realizes Keith took off sometime ago.

-

So Keith does remember him. But apparently, Lance has remembered Keith all wrong. Or only remembered the things he wanted to. That night, camped out by a fire with Hunk (who has preformed nothing short of a miracle by creating the closest thing to s'mores Lance could ever hope to taste while surrounded by dinokoalas), he remembers something else. A slip of night that’d been buried under all of the other moments that had taken up the VIP area of his recent memory.

The Garrison library wasn’t a place Lance enjoyed being. But finals. And also aerodynamics. He had to score at least in the mid-80s to get on the Dean’s list, so he could get that call from his mom after she opened the letter back home, her soft, raspy voice going, _I’m so proud of you, baby._

He was combing the stacks for a good place to hunker down with his 42 ounce energy drink and his 400 pounds of books when he saw a flash of red from one of the far tables. Narrowing his eyes, he moved through the long cast shadows stealthily, closer to where Keith was sitting at the center table. No books, no notes, no one else around. Just the Garrison’s star fighter pilot, staring at the wood grain of the table in front of him like he could read something in the dark whorls.

 _What the heck is he doing?_ Lance thought. Even over the books on the shelf Lance was peering through, his could see something tense and complicated working it’s way over Keith’s face. The clench of the gentle curve of his jaw. The lines between his eyebrows. Keith’d had another atomic blow out with Professor Montgomery, so bad she’d asked the rest of the class to leave the room so she could deal with him alone. Lance wasn’t sure what’d happened after that. He’d just been stoked for the rest of the afternoon off.

Outside of class, Keith all but vanished from campus (not that Lance made like, a conscious effort to look for him or anything), so seeing him struck by dim library lighting, surrounded by the straight spines of books, made Lance wonder if he was dreaming. Not that he ever dreamed about Keith. Because that would just be weird. Lance pressed closer, inching carefully around the side of the shelf to see better, to witness what he was sure was going to be a Definite Something he'd be able to tell all the boys in the farside dorms. _Keith Kogane had a meltdown in the library,_ he pictured himself breathless, giving Hunk and the guys the play by play. _He cried and everything._ It'd be great. It'd be vindication of the sweetest sort.

It happened, then. So slight, but it tilted the world on it's axis. Keith gently dropped his head down against the table, hands coming up to press against the back of his skull, and he stayed like that for an infinite minute. Lance’s insides seized, because he knew what he was looking at now, that it was a variation of a pose he'd been stuck in countless times before, that this was the most human moment he'd ever witnessed the kid have. Lance was looking at someone who had no where to go.

One of the notebooks Lance had clutched in his arms slid out through the bottom and made a sound that might has well have been the base’s alarm. Keith’s head whipped up. His eyes were shined. Wet. Lance opened his mouth, maybe to apologize, he wasn’t sure. The words that were trying to form, incredibly enough, tasted something close to, _Me too._

He didn’t have the chance. Keith bolted, knocking over his chair and running up the steps. And the next day, he wasn’t in class. And again the next. It was about a week before anyone confirmed that the rumors were true: Keith had been kicked out. Apparently being the best and brightest didn’t make up for being an explosive jackass.

Lance snorted, pushing thoughts of wet eyes from his mind. “More like Keith KoGONE, am I right?”

Hunk winced, but didn’t anything.

Lance didn’t care. He wouldn’t care. He was undoubtedly going to be made a fighter pilot, just like he’d always wanted. And he’d be top of the class, just like he’d always worked for. And he could forget about Keith and the library and everything in between, because it didn’t matter anymore.

Until it did.

-

“Is this,” Lance asks, “really necessary?”

“I’ve seen the way you eat,” Allura answers, coiling her cloth napkin tightly. “So yes, it’s extremely necessary.” She snaps the napkin at his left arm. “And for the last time, elbows off the table.”

“Ow! Jeez! Fine,” he huffs. His eyes dart over. “She never yells at you."

Shiro shrugs his massive shoulders. “I have better table manners.”

Which is such a lie. Shiro is an animal at the dinner table. He inhales food, makes a mess everywhere, and is as unrefined as they come. Dude’s a soldier, not a diplomat. But for whatever reason, he’s decided to join Lance, Allura, and Coran for their crash course in alien etiquette, taking dainty bites of food, keeping his elbows off the table, and saying junk like, _this food is excellent. My compliments to the chef._ Like Coran isn’t standing right there, practically preening.

What’s worse is that no one else joined them, and Lance feels like a kid sitting in a booster seat at a table full of adults, Shrio and Allura laughing and leaning in close to talk to each other. 

Not even Keith, who was seemingly there for every step of this strange fanci-fication process, is at the table. Lance can just picture him, sitting at the far end, stuffing his face full of rolls and laughing at Lance as he gets reprimanded for things like breathing rudely.

Lance snorts, misery dragging the corners of his mouth down. “I think she just likes you better.”

Shiro opens his mouth, about to say something when the far doors swish open.

Four heads turn to watch Keith walk into the room. Sweaty. He plops down next to Shiro, across from Lance, and reaches for the bread basket. Shiro leans away. “Keith, you reek. You couldn’t have showered before coming down to eat?”

“Nope,” the ‘p’ pops when Keith says it. “Pass the kind-of-butter.”

“Pass the kind-of-butter…” Lance rolls a hand through the air. “Magic word, starts with a P?”

Keith stares for a moment. “...Pass?”

“Starts with P, followed by an L…” Lance trails off, circling his hand slower.

A squint. “Plass isn’t a word.”

Allura gives the plate a shove, and it sides to Keith.

“Oh, come on!” Lance throws his hands up. “You yell at me for breathing too loudly, but Keith lacks basic manners, and you don’t say a thing?”

“Keith isn’t going to be disguised as a member of high society,” Allura reminds him. “You are. And for the last time, get your elbows off the table.”

“Seriously?” Lance leans in (on his elbows.) “So he just shows up late, barks orders, and still gets a pass?”

“A plass,” Keith corrects, and Shiro promptly chokes on a bite of food.

“You’re fine,” Allura thumps Shiro on the back as he continues to hack. 

Something hits the side of Lance’s face. His head snaps down to the fleck of bread crust that just him his cheek, then up to Keith, who’s feigning interest in the ceiling and whistling innocently. Lance throws it back, and is misses by a mile, but he’s laughing, the stitched threads of maturity Allura and Coran and Shiro have been tightening for the last week coming undone the more and more Keith smiles that vicious grin at Lance. Just Lance, and no one else.

_tbc. ___

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you: so, uh, when does this take place in the canon timeline? 
> 
> me: WHO KNOWS! I SURE DON'T!!
> 
> you: this is supposed to be a fake dating fic. i thought this was gonna be keith and lance fake dating :/
> 
> me: so did i! then i changed my dang mind. but you'll see why next chapter
> 
> you: well when's the next chapter?
> 
> me:...next tuesday...haha....*sweats*
> 
> come harass me on tumblr @ [chillnaxin](http://chillnaxin.tumblr.com/)


	2. Chapter 2

The first time Lance saw Keith fly, his entire soul swelled. Double the size of his painfully tangible body, it was an outpouring of awe, of jealousy, of an insurmountable need to be in the cockpit of his own plane, ship, whatever and just go. He was sure everyone standing within a ten foot radius of him could feel it wash over them.Or maybe they were too distracted by Keith cutting through the air in that tiny two person stratoliner. Everyone during their second semester had to clock a certain amount of "fly time" in these rickety little airplanes; everyone who'd gone up (the ones that'd actually managed to get off the ground) would either wobble in the air before their respective instructor would take over, or fly in a painfully straight line at a too-low height before circling back around to the landing strip. Lance was chomping at the bit, ready to just _go_ , but for some reason every time he volunteered to go next someone was chosen over him.

 _Outstanding, cadet,_ Commander Iverson said. _Absolutely outstanding._

Whatever had been blooming warm inside of Lance was extinguished by the tight lipped look of complete indifference drawn on Keith’s face, hair sweaty and matted to his forehead from his helmet. Like he didn’t care. Like none of it mattered. As annoyed as Lance had been ever since their first fatal encounter at the gym, he wasn’t the type of guy to harbor grudges. He was fun. He was easy. Anything beyond that wasn’t worth paying any mind to.

Keith somehow reached in past all of that and pulled out all the uglier parts of Lance he preferred to pretend didn’t exist, simply by breathing. 

Then Keith washed out, and Lance was able to slide into that prime fighter pilot spot. Something that should’ve been so right, that Lance had wanted so badly, echoed empty inside of him. Because someone like Keith, who had everything going for him, who was so immensely talented and poised and cool, just threw it all away like it was nothing. Like being a fighter pilot was nothing, like all Lance had ever wanted was nothing. Like Lance was nothing.

Lance hates that feeling more than anything.

-

They end up in the kitchen under the pretense of cleaning up, but mostly they spend their time scarfing down whatever Coran left out from cooking earlier, Lance and Keith both sitting up on the counter, knees occasionally bumping. The enormity of where they are, what they’re doing, contrasted so intensely with something as simple and lovely as brushing knees makes Lance tear the paper napkin in his lap to shreds and suck down three juice packs.

“I’m officially cutting you off,” Keith says, pulling the juice and all its chunky goodness out of Lance’s reach.

“Unfair! Uncalled for! Uncool!” Lance chants. “Do I take away things that you love, Keith?”

Keith drops his gaze, not answering, the moment stalling like the spluttering engine of a car. Lance clears his throat, the mounting pressure of silence bearing down on his shoulders enough to make him sweat as he wonders what he could’ve said wrong. His eyes shift, as if he’ll be able to see a new topic of conversation, landing on the far windows just above the row of sinks, stars dazzling beyond it.

“You ever realize how wild it is that all these planets, all these different and unique species of lifeforms, flourishing with their own diverse and distinct cultures,” Lance asks, squinting, “all speak English?”

Keith stares at him. “Uh.”

“Like!” Lance’s hands fly. “It’s nuts! How is that even possible? What kind of conspiracy is going on here, Keith. Tell me.”

Keith shrugs. “I just figured that when we y’know, _magically melded our minds with those giant cat robots,_ we gained the ability to, like, understand and speak as many existing languages as our brains can possibly contain.” A pause. “Or something. Maybe it shifts depending on where we are and who we’re speaking to. Plus, Allura and Coran can do it to. Alteans were insanely good diplomats for a reason. They’ve got those like, shape shifting powers, why not language shifting powers, too? Why wouldn’t their abilities carry over to the Paladins?”

“I mean,” Lance splutters, “I guess.”

Keith snorts. “What’s your theory, then?”

“That I’m actually still asleep back in the barracks at the Garrison and none of this is actually happening,” it comes out thin and frantic.

Keith pats his shoulder. “You got some messed up dreams, buddy.”

Lance opens his mouth, words to the effect of, _yeah, you’re in them_ about to spill out from between his smile, but for once he thinks better of it. He deflates with a sigh. “What I wouldn’t give for my biggest problem to be a pop quiz in aerodynamics.”

A pause. A slant of light cuts across Keith’s face, the sharp angles, making the dark darker. “Didn’t you ever feel it, though? Like there was so much more, but you were stuck? This is the something more. Everything we’re doing out here matters.”

Lance stares. “Everything we were doing before mattered, too.”

“Didn’t feel that way.” Keith shrugs, meeting Lance’s eyes. “Not to me, anyway.”

“You don’t…” His eyebrows crease. “Miss it? Earth, I mean.”

There’s a fray of threads at the hem of Keith’s shirt, bitten down fingernails picking at it. “Not...like you do.”

Lance swallows, forcing his heart back down into his chest, and has to look away. He feels it that, that schism between them, gaping and gasping, deeper than he could’ve imagined. But their knees bump again, and his body fills and expands as he allows air in. He doesn’t think about driving with all the windows down in his uncle’s truck, he doesn’t think about camping out behind his house with his sister, he doesn’t think about Sunday night dinners packed around the dining room table with giant bowls of hot food getting passed around, clinking silverware, overlapping voices and laughter and stories. 

“I do miss stuff,” Keith tells him. “Weirdly enough, I miss the Garrison. And riding my bike through the canyons. And all my music.”

The schism closes, ever so slightly. Lance intones, “And pizza.”

Keith nods, raising his water bottle. “And pizza.”

“I miss pizza,” Lance laughs. “And...and I miss my mom. Everyone else, too, but her, she was--I just really miss her.”

Keith doesn’t pretend to understand, but he reaches, his finger firmly wrapping around Lance’s wrist. He doesn’t pull or push it, just lets them rest against the counter. And Lance doesn’t to push or pull Keith.

“She misses you, too,” is all Keith says. And Lance knows that. Of course he knows that. But hearing someone say it outside of the questioning echo of Lance’s mind hit him with the g-force of a jet engine. He has to hide his burning eyes, and decides the best way to do that is to press his face into Keith’s shoulder. This is the bad overflow, the bad too much, the stuff he can’t control. His thoughts turn wild and vivid, the blast of a thought, of taking the team to meet his family. His family to meet his family. To introduce Keith to his mom; he pictures the two of them in his kitchen, Keith rigid but trying, and his mom asking to hug him, and when Keith says yes she'll squeeze the life out of him. Their knees bump again as Lance shifts on the bar stool, and his mind pulls to a moment that hasn’t happened yet, bumping knees under the kitchen table while mom asks if they want pancakes.

“Whoo.” Lance whips back, inhaling so deep and sudden it hurts. “I’m good. I swear. I’m good.”

Keith shrugs. “I know, dude.”

“I mean,” Lance laughs, bordering on hysterical as he motions through the air. “I have a date with the Princess tomorrow. How could I not be good?”

Keith pulls back completely, jumping down, and Lance suddenly feels cold, watching Keith start to toss all the junk littering the counters into a garbage bag. “Yeah. You definitely need your beauty rest, then.”

“I’m beautiful no matter how little I sleep,” Lance retorts, grinning. 

“I was in aero theory with you." Keith rolls his eyes. “I’ve seen what you look like without sleep. Get a full eight hours. Or like, maybe nine or ten?”

“I mean, sure, that’s insulting, but you’re just further admitting that you remember me,” Lance sings, drawing circles in the air with his pointing finger.

Keith stresses, “Vaguely.”

Nothing Lance remembers about Keith feels vague; it’s sharp, piercing through almost every memory up until Keith’s expulsion. And even after that, Keith had been this phantom limb, not quite there but never gone, taunting and constant.

“I remember you were loud.” Keith pauses in collecting the trash, a small breathy laugh escaping. “You flirted with everyone. Teachers, students, officers, the simulator.” He counts off his fingers.

“Hey now,” Lance says, “Bessie was my girl. I just wanted her to know she was special to me.”

Keith raises an eyebrow. “And how exactly is flirting with everyone supposed to make anyone feel special?”

“Well, maybe if anyone ever flirted with you,” Lance grumbles, chewing at the end of a juice pack straw, “you would know.”

Keith reaches forward, scowling as he yanks the straw from between Lance's teeth. “People flirt with me all the time.”

“Oh?” Lance’s mouth slants into a smirk, arms crossed.

Keith frazzles, cheeks pink as he shoves the last of the empty cartons into the bag. “According to you, hordes of girls would flock after me. But also according to you, no one would touch me with a ten foot pole. So.”

“Okay, maybe not a ten foot pole,” Lance amends. “But a five footer, at least.”

Keith ties off the bag, walking over to the disposal lock. “I don’t really care, anyway.”

“Seriously?” Lance edges closer. “Not even a little?”

Keith is quiet. Suspiciously quiet.

“There’s not a single person who has ever gotten your heart a-thumpin’? Made you get, y’know, all sweaty and weird?”

Keith dodges the question, “Is that how you feel about Allura?”

“It’s--” Lance should say yes. Yes is the easy answer. Yes is true, but also, not completely. If Lance is being completely honest, Allura is incredible, she’s this pillar of enormous strength and dignity. And she’s obviously very beautiful. He was so instantly attracted to her, and still is, almost the same way he’d felt about Shiro, mixing and matching hero worship with fevered teenage fantasies. For Lance, crushes are fun distractions. And a lot of the time, he needs distraction. But she doesn’t burn through his mind with wildfire thoughts. 

Keith’s expression is carefully blank. He lets go of the trash, closes the lock, and turns on the disposal. A distant whirring and crunching sound is the only thing to hum through the silence, until Keith finally says, “I’m going to bed.”

“Yeah. Yeah, me--” Lance tries to say, but Keith’s already walked out the door. Lance deflates, and sighs, “Me, too.”

-

_What do you think did it?_ Lance asked Hunk. _What do you think finally made him snap?_

Hunk shrugged his shoulders, sitting hunched over a discombobulated engine block on their floor. It was close to midnight, Lance lying on his bed with his music humming low from the speakers on his desk, content to watch Hunk work. _Who are we talking about?_

 _Keith,_ Lance dragged out the single syllable with a mouthful of distaste.

 _Oh,_ came the reply. _Dunno. Family stuff, maybe?_

Lance had a hard time picturing Keith’s family. He could only picture multiple Keith’s, with mullets of varying lengths. He snorted. _I can only imagine what kind of people spawned someone like him. They’re probably real pieces of work._

-

He spends the final hour strapping and lacing himself into his vile getup, muttering their back story to himself under his breath, flipping through his index cards, memorizing the ins and outs of the Yaltiss’ian elite. “Blarhtnek the Great. Great grandson of the Netian Emperor Klygon. Ask him about his newborn quadruplets and his stats in--”

“You ready?” 

Lance turns. Keith stands in his doorway, made up in his server’s outfit with his hair back. Earrings. He’s wearing silver studs in his ears. The index cards in Lance’s hands slip out, fanning across the floor. Lance stares down at the mess, then kicks them towards his bed. “Uh. I’ll clean that up later.”

Keith’s mouth tugs half up. “Don’t be nervous. If push comes to shove, you can always smother someone with your ruffles.”

Lance holds up his ridiculous lacy cuffs. “Care to test that theory?”

With a snorted laugh, Keith walks further into the room, bringing his hands up. A million light speed thoughts through rip through Lance’s mind, and he swallows. I should close my eyes, he thinks, then, No! I should keep them open!

He feels something hook behind his ear. “New comms. Pidge wanted me to give you yours.”

Lance touches it, lightly. “Right. Comms. Cool.”

“Mine are these earrings.” He points to the studs. “You’ve got this metal cuff. They’re some of Allura’s old jewelry that Pidge was able to sneak all this tiny tech into. There’s no way for it to be detected. Or, y’know, not a way that we’re aware of. Her words, not mine.”

He tilts his head to catch his reflection in the mirror mounted on the far wall. A gold, glinting cuff curved along the shell of his left ear, as delicate looking as lace and easily the least offensive thing on his body. He catches Keith in the mirror, giving Lance a critical once over with his arms crossed and his gaze pointed. Lance clears his throat. “Are you ready?”

“I can’t fit knives in these pants,” Keith sounds so genuinely put out by this, patting at his would-be pockets. “I feel like I’m going in naked.”

Lance does not consider these words. He does not roll them over in his mind over and over until a heat blooms over the back of his neck.

He’s not thinking when he reaches out and twirls that tiny pony tail between his fingers. Keith’s shoulders go rigid, and since Lance is already committed to being a huge embarrassing guber, he might as well go full force and admit, “Your hair’s really soft.”

Tension is radiating off of Keith in waves, but he doesn’t move away. Lance flips the end with his thumb over and over. He wants to run it over his mouth, feel that soft curl of hair against his lips, under his nose. He’s seriously considering it, resolve crumbling more and more with each second that passes. His pinky finger, with a mind of it’s own, lowers to the warm skin at the back of Keith’s neck and rubs lightly up and down.

Keith wrenches himself away, slapping a hand over the spot Lance’d touched, face a deep red that makes a heat in Lance’s own face sizzle. He holds up his hands in surrender. “Uh. Sorry.”

“You’re not funny,” Keith says, teeth bared. “This isn’t some joke.”

Lance frowns at that. “Okay? I didn’t think you’d be so ticklish. Sorry.”

“Ticklish,” Keith parrots, toneless. “You think that’s the problem?”

Lance opens his mouth, not sure what’s about the spill out, but before he can say anything the door slides open, Shiro walking through. “We’re leaving--you guys set?”

Keith doesn’t answer, just pulls his ponytail tight and storms past the both of them. Lance brings a fist to his mouth and clears his throat when Shiro narrows his eyes at him, slipping back into something exaggerated, something well worn, if a little stiff at the joints, arms held up at a 90 degree angle, lifting his knees up high with each step. “Well, that fancy ancient china isn’t gonna steal itself! Leggo!”

“Lance.” Shiro catches him by the elbow, and Lance is suddenly super aware how often this doesn’t happen. Just him and Shiro. His throat closes, and Shiro’s concern squinted eyes gauge him. “I just...want to remind you where we are.”

“Uh,” Lance tries, “Somewhere in the Qualistrium Galaxy? Wherever that is.”

“No, I meant--” Shiro sighs, hand in his hair, then something resigns in his expression. Is it weird that Shiro, at times, reminds him a lot of his mom? Which conflicts horrifically with that pseudo-crush he’d harbored back in the day, but Shiro’s got his tough but tender dynamic. Supportive, but tells it like it is. The way _Lance_ snaps out of Shiro's mouth will send Lance hurtling back in time to every moment when he'd done something particularly obnoxious as a kid. Like calling his cousin’s new baby ugly. Or telling his first grade teacher she shouldn’t be a teacher. Or when he’d shovel whole spoonfuls of raw cookie dough into his mouth whenever his mom's back was turned in the middle of baking. 

“I just want to remind you where we are,” Shiro says, steady. “Of what we're in the middle of--it's something bigger than all of us. And sometimes we have to know when to cast personal feelings aside so that we can fight to see another day. In a perfect universe, you would be able to wait until this whole ordeal was over with. But I can’t expect you, for the indefinite amount of time we’re a team, to constantly hold yourselves back.” He shakes his head. “You’re both so young. All of you. I forget sometimes, and I think...hiding this, who you are, who you both want to be, will do more damage than it will good.”

“Shiro, I’m saying this with the utmost respect,” Lance levels with him, “but I have no freakin’ idea what you’re saying right now.”

A warm laugh, and Shiro squeezes his arm. “Just be careful with each other, all right?”

He moves like he’s about to walk out of the room, and Lance blurts, “Shiro, you’re still pretty young yourself, y’know?”

Shiro holds his gaze for a moment, like there's something being left purposefully unsaid when a blur of blue shoots past the door accompanied by the rapid clack clack clack of heels. A pause, then more rapid clacking, and suddenly Allura pushes into the room, the skirts of her gown actually too wide to fit through the doorway. She struggles, trying to gather the layers in arms. “Why are the two of you just standing around? The shuttles are ready! Let’s move!” She grunts, attempting to pull herself back out into the hall. Her gown almost seems to grow in protest, and she sighs, voice tiny, “A little help, if you wouldn’t mind?”

“Of course, Princess,” the way Shiro says princess makes Lance’s face heat all of the sudden. The two of them push and pull at what seems to be trillions of layers of fabric. It’s a wonder Lance doesn’t suffocate.

-

They leave in separate shuttles, Lance and Allura in the biggest and most luxurious of the three ships with Coran piloting it remotely from the castle. They sit with an endless amount of time in front of them, Allura dressed to the nines in a gigantic, elaborate gown that puts Lance’s own ruffled monstrosity to shame, blue and bedazzled with iridescent pink stones that reflected tiny rainbows against the walls and floors around her. An extended amount of time alone with the princess who, all nefarious plotting aside, is technically his date for the evening. Their backstory is that they’re courting one another, an arrangement set up by their respective families. They’re practically a romantic comedy just waiting to happen, right on the cusp of sexy shenanigans and wacky misunderstandings that all eventually lead to a grand, public gesture and mutual confessions of true love.

Despite all of this, despite his wildest fantasies coming true, all Lance can find it in himself to do is lean his cheek against his first and stare out at the endless expanse of space in front of them. It’d just been a pinky. He hadn’t even meant to do it.

“You’re being…” Allura squints at him from her seat on his right. The skirt of her dress is so voluminous it sits around her like a beanbag chair, ruffles practically up to her neck. “Oddly quiet.”

“Hm? Oh.” Lance sits up straight. “Sorry.”

“Is something wrong?” she asks, leaning closer. She’s wearing these chandelier like earrings that clink and jingle softly whenever she moves, little reflections of light splayed across her cheeks. They look like stars in the dark, and Lance feels like he keeps reaching out, reaching out, reaching for someone. Allura is so close. She’s so close, but her face is drawn into crumpled concern for him. Her hand on his arm squeezes reassuringly. Her presence is enveloping him, and he wants to sink into that feeling and never come out. She’s beautiful, he thinks, pulling away.

“Nah, it’s just...” he starts, rubbing the back of his neck. “Me and Keith. No big. You know us.” 

“Yes,” she says, slowly, some sort of calculation running through her mind as her eyes focused on something, “I do.”

“Not that I normally don’t love when you look at me,” Lance tries out a laugh, saying, “But you’re kinda weirding me out right now.”

He’s weirding himself out. This is not how he’s supposed to be. He should lean closer. He should want to touch the stars on her face. All he can think about his his pinky finger dragging over the nape of a warm, pale neck. 

She seems to snap her attention back into focus as she serves him a dry look. “Deal with your little spat when you get back to the castle. Right now I need your eye on the prize.”

“Right. The fancy plate.”

“The Discus.”

“Whatever.”

-

The palace is probably ten times the size of the Altean castle, and Lance knows they’ve all been pouring over the blueprints for days now, but seeing it in real life and not in translucent holographic schematics sends Lance’s heart pounding. The fleshy marble, the highbeam shine of lacquered floors, of alien precious metals, sewn together with decadent chandeliers, art, and guests. And of course, the flood of black clad security coursing along the perimeter of every room like poison in blood. Huge alien guards who could break Lance in half just by looking at him. He keeps his shoulders square and his chin up, trying not to think about the sweat pooling under his arms, at his lower back.

When they’re announced to the grand ball room like all of the other paired off guests, Lance barely remembers to reign himself in and seem at least semi-composed for their entrance. A creature with a mouth like a mop and snail eyes calls out over the room from the balcony at the top of the marble staircase, “Lady Dutchess Shallura of Altea and her escort, Commander Lancelot Baadaas Mopho of Earth.” He pronounces earth ee-art-huh.

“That,” Keith’s voice buzzes in his ear, “is the name you decided on?”

Lance’s head jerks up, and sure enough from across the ballroom he can see Keith standing at the end of a line of servants (an intergalactic rainbow of alien species), silver platter in hand. His smile is a slanted cut across his face, amused, eyebrow raised. Lance gets a flash of a thought, so fast it barely registers, that in another life, in another cataclysm of circumstances, this could be real. Lance could be some high born aristocrat, Keith could be some servant, they could meet hundreds of different ways in a hundred different lifetimes, and somehow Lance was so sure they always would.

Get a grip, he tells himself.

“When the Empress of Androsia greets you,” Allura tells him, pulling him from his thoughts as she pulls him down the grand staircase. “Don’t be alarmed if her tentacles lift you off of the ground.”

“I did not,” Lance hisses, clutching at her arm tighter, “sign up for tentacles.”

-

Their table is drenched elaborately in decorations, an overflowing centerpiece of flowers, that, upon further inspection, he discovers are inhibited by a tiny creatures about as big as a thumbtack, with tiny bodies and giant heads that are dominated by huge oil slick eyes. They glimmer and dance and remove used napkins. It’s absolutely wild.

“Lankobots,” Allura says, nose in the air. “Perfectly archaic specimens. I had them at my debut centuries ago.”

Lance extends his pinky finger, and one of the Lankobots hugs it. He’s eyes well with tears and he whispers, afraid of hurting their tiny robot ears, “Holy crow.”

Keith doesn’t serve them. Lance can’t even see him, and to punctuate his sour mood, the alien appetizers are gross, textured like wet sand with noodly little wobbly bits tucked in. Allura is scarfing them down by the handful, her own high society manners seemingly having flown out the airlock the second one of the servers offered her their platter. She moans, half muffled by food. “I haven’t had klasiktish in years. Are you going to finish yours?”

Lance, poking at his own plate, has a sudden intense and insatiable yearning for tostones when he physically feels Allura tense next to him. He looks up, finding her blotting her face with a cloth napkin, muttering, “Of course he’s coming over here now.”

Lance cranes his neck. “Who?”

“Emperor Yazlort. Ruler of the Ya’altissians.”

Lance’s pulse spikes, thundering in his ears, snapping his head every which way. Allura has only droned on about the Ya’altssian royalty for days now, the same tired march of facts. The Yazlort bloodline apparently reaches back millennia. _A millennia of jerks,_ she’d grumbled as she plied Lance with hours of Ya’altissian history and culture. He asks, “Are you sure? I thought he’d be...taller. Or like, grander, somehow?”

“Trust me. I’d know that glargin face from anywhere. He looks just like his great great great grandfather.”

“Right,” Lance echoes, “glargin. Totally know what that is.”

“It’s like,” Allura scrunches her face as she speaks, “all conniving and evil looking.”

“Oh, like a snake.”

“Right,” Allura says, “A snake. I totally know what that is.”

“My Lady.”

Allura pops up onto her feet, and bows gracefully. Lance, meanwhile, stands rigidly by her side, sweating profusely through this ruffles. “Your highness.”

Shiny and colorful are the first two words that come to mind as Lance takes in the presence bearing down on them in the cramped space between tables. Despite Allura’s semi-fabricated status, they’d only managed to wrangle a space at a small table in the back of the ballroom where the lights didn’t shine quiet as brightly, as last minute guests. Yazlort’s scales moved like liquid as he shifted his weight to lean back, head tilted back to stare down at them through the bored slits of his black, wet eyes. Even though he’s in twice as many ruffles as Lance, even more ridiculous, tiered in an ombre of orange that clashes with the iridescent magenta of his scales, he carries them with an air of ease, an air of rightness that makes Lance feel even more like a clown in a costume.

“Imagine my surprise,” he says, the gils at his jaw fluttering, “when I heard the last surviving member of the Altean court would be in attendance. Alteans haven’t graced us with their presence at one of these events since my great great great grandfather’s reign. You’re of familial descendant of King Alfor, are you not? Last I heard, your people were extinct.”

Allura tenses, visibly, and Lance figures it’s a good a time as any to cut in. “Hey there. The name’s Lance...alot. Commander of the Squirtle flanks of the Lapras Army. Pleasure to meet your acquaintance.” 

He sticks out his hand. 

Yazlort stares at it. “I don’t...have anything to give you.”

Lance flubs, mind racing, before blurting, “Where I come from, it’s the highest sign of respect to briefly clasp hands. My apologies, I thought you’d be more acquainted with Earth culture, given what a renowned diplomat I heard you were in your younger years.”

Allura makes a small, distressed noise that might be her attempting to smother a laugh.

“Oh, of course. The hand clasp.” Yazlort sticks his hand out. “Forgive me, I just spent the last hour with the Androsians, and you know how they can be.”

Lance takes a moment to hawk and nicely sized loogie into his palm, quickly grabbing at Yazlort’s extended scaley paw. It makes a sick squelching sound, and in his earpiece he hears Keith snort, “Nice.” For no good reason at all, Lance flushes. Yazlort seems to think it’s being directed at him, and smirks, taking his hand back and wiping his it on the handkerchief offered to him by one of the servants behind him. 

He bows, barely, and says, “I hope you both enjoy the evening.”

“Oh,” Allura courtesies, deep and proper. “We plan to.”

-

An hour ticks by, all of the guests having been announced and a round of music struck up by the live orchestra on the far end of the ballroom. Lance cranes his neck to see out over the sea of elaborate headdresses, unable to sit still. The way they'd left things off in his room itches at the back of his mind, making his leg shake and his fingers twist into the napkin in his lap. The room is so big, he only thinks he catches glimpses of Keith a few times, but is never actually sure. There are actually a fair number of humanoid looking lifeforms as servers, sporting dark heads of hair and an air of general disdain for crowded public spaces. He slaps a hand over his cheek, stinging now after something small and fast hit it. “Ow.” He turns to find Allura boring holes into him with her eyes.

“Lance, focus,” she snaps, reaching up to curl a strand of hair behind her ear. Her chandelier earrings sparkle, moving like liquid as she speaks, hushed but firm. “Especially since we don’t know when the food is coming out.”

“Nothing from the kitchens, so far. But I think there's some kind of...I don't know, circuit board in the pantry?” Hunk’s voice rumbles in the earpiece. “Also, I would like to say--the appetizers? Not my work.”

“Be honest,” Keith asks, and Lance sits up straighter, “have you actually been looking, or have you just been cooking?”

There’s silence, then, “What about you, Keith? Anything you’re finding particularly distracting tonight?”

Radio silence. Lance frowns.

Then, as if Hunk had never asked a question, Keith says, “Clear on my end. I’m trying to talk to the other servers to see what I can get. Nothing so far.”

“Never thought I’d see the day,” Lance drawls, sitting up on the edge of his seat, “when Keith actually volunteered himself for socializing. With other living sentient creatures, and not just his knives.” Now that he for sure has Keith’s attention, he doesn’t want to let it slip through his fingers.

When he chances a glance at Allura, she looks like she’s either about to claw her own eyeballs out in sheer exasperation, or rip out Lance’s in sheer aggravations. “Can you,” she says, low, “at least attempt to be even remotely discreet? This is a covert operation.”

“Hey now.” Lance leans back. “Covert? Is my middle name, Princess.”

Hunk pffts. “Your middle name is Maurice.”

“Dude!” Lance stresses. Keith has stopped answering completely; he's either muted his comm or he just doesn't care.

-

He finds Keith.

Allura is toting him around the room, clearly in her element, the way she effortlessly converses with anyone and everyone without missing a beat. She’s not just a princess in title or in looks; she’s a true aristocrat and diplomat in a way he can’t help but marvel at. He barely even needs to be here, but the reason she needed an escort becomes clear when he realizes there are throngs of aliens who keep eyeing her, bursting in mid conversation, trying to goad her into dancing until Lance stands a little taller and rests a hand at the center of her back, cutting them off with, “excuse us, gentlemen, I think there’s a fresh plate of klasiktish at our table waiting for us.”

When Lance spots him, Keith is at the bar. It’s clearly under the pretense of loading his tray with a dozen more frothy orange drinks, but as their conversation unfolds Keith leans in a little further, body postured with ease as their soundless conversation is punctuated with smiles. The bartender supports himself on his forearms, coming in close to speak next to Keith’s ear. Keith, who turns his head obligingly and keeps smiling the entire time like he’s--like he’s--

“...Lance. Lance!”

“Hm?” Lance snaps his attention back to his side, where Allura is pinching painfully at his arm. “Can I help you?”

“Yes,” she breathes through clenched teeth, “By focusing.”

“I am focusing. I’m laser focused.” Lance holds a hand to his chest. “You know who’s not focused?”

A sigh, Allura’s eyes sliding shut.

“Keith. Keith is the one who needs to focus,” Lance grumbles. “Not canoodle with some alien bartender.”

A broad shouldered, smirking, long-lashed alien bartender who looks like he could probably bench press Shrio and Hunk combined, intricate and ornate ink along the length of his arms, ears shining with several gold hoops. Real pierced ears, like Keith’s. Lance’s mom never let him get his ears pierced, no matter how much he’d begged. In middle school he’d almost let his cousin Ricky do it with a sewing needle in the garage, but he chickened out at the last moment. He wishes desperately in that moment, ridiculously, that his thirteen year old self hadn’t been such a weenie.

When he fixes his gaze back around, Allura’s flat glare and crossed arms set his nerves on edge. “What?”

“We are literally,” she leans in, whispering, “in the heart of enemy territory, and you’re letting your petty jealousy distract you. Keith is fine. He can handle himself.”

He stares at her for a beat. “Yeah, I’m gonna go check on him.”

As he stands, Allura all but collapses back in her chair, burying her face in her hands with a faint groan.

-

He saddles up to the bar alongside Keith, making sure their shoulders bump as he asks, “Hey, waiter, got any of those mini puke bites left?”

The arch of Keith’s eyebrows clearly spells out _what the hell do you think you’re doing?_ But all Lance really cares about is blocking the bar tender’s line of vision with some well placed ruffles. Keith says, “Uh. Sorry. Sir. We’re fresh out.”

“Aw, c’mon.” He leans fully on the bar. “If you’ve got time to flirt with the bartender, you’ve definitely got time to see if the kitchen’s made any more. I’m _positutely_ famished.”

Keith’s mouth falls open, the normal scathing comeback he’d usually hurl at Lance fighting to spill out. Jacked Bartender wedges a glass of something bright orange and frothy between them. “The kitchen is in the middle of getting ready to serve the main course, sir. It should be coming out shortly.”

Lance picks up the glass and holds it up to the light. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be pushy, but there’s this smudge? Right here? On the glass? If you could be a real sport and get me a clean one, that’d be super.”

If Jacked Bartender is annoyed, it doesn’t read on his pristinely sculpted face, but maybe aliens just show they’re ticked off by smiling genially and saying, “Of course. One moment.”

“Thank-- _ow.”_ A sharp pain explodes in his foot, and he whips his head back to face Keith. "Was that for?”

“What,” he asks, voice low, face blank, “in the hell are you doing?”

“What am I doing?” Lance hisses. “What are _you_ doing? You’re gonna blow our cover.”

 _“Me?”_ he asks, and a couple nearby turns their heads (all three of them) to look at Keith. He inhales, then, quieter and measured, “You’re the one storming over here and making a scene. Go back to your date, Lance.”

On paper, it’s just a suggestion, but the bite behind the words makes it hit Lance like a low blow. The word date grates his nerves, eye twitching. His mouth thins into a tight line. “You know what? I think I will.”

“Good,” Keith snaps, “Go.”

“I am!” He sees a glass offered to him in the corner of his vision, and he snatches it without thinking, downing the entire thing in one single gulp before slamming the flute back against the counter. “Excuse me. My Lady awaits.”

It takes all his self restraint not to sprint back to the table, Allura in the middle of some friendly conversation with the tentacled aristocrats seated next to her. He has a small realization, somewhere in the back of his muddled mind, that she was born into a life like this. This strange intergalactic blue blooded life where she was meant to dazzle and socialize with rulers of lands Lance, in his tiny basement bedroom that was perpetually damp and smelled like a hamper, could’ve never even dreamed of. He thinks part of this whole heist might have been a convenient cover for her to regain a taste of not-quite home. Something Lance understands more than he cares to admit.

She has a glass of her own orange froth in her hand, and he swiftly steals it, downing it in another single swig. She stares at him, startled.

“Lance?” Allura asks. “What--”

“Let’s dance,” he extends a hand to her. “We’re gonna blow the lid off this joint.”

Her smile is small, and exasperated, and she probably doesn’t know what he means, but it’s there. She takes his hand and lets him guide her to the dance floor just as the lights dim and the orchestra starts to hum.

-

Sometimes it happens like this. Where he can put everything out of his mind and channel all of his thoughts into one thing with single minded devotion. Sometimes he can forget every awkward angle of his body, and he can forget every strange too earnest word that’s slipped between his teeth, and he can move and breathe with the ease of being alive in a moment. That’s what he loves about being a pilot. That’s what he loves about Voltron. And that’s what he loves about spinning around with Allura on the dance floor, her eyes sparkling and her mouth grinning, their names fake and their costumes ridiculous. Her hair is falling out of those intricate braids the more they spin, and she’s lovely. Truly, breathlessly lovely in the way people rarely let themselves be.

At the end, he bows like Coran taught him, which she returns, and there’s a mild cascade of applause around them. He bows for them, too, and when he lifts his head he thinks he can see Keith standing towards the far wall, dark head of hair, darker pair of eyes. But Lance blinks and he’s gone.

-

The first class without Keith didn’t go quite like Lance expected.

Not only did his professors not instantly start realizing his innate genius and tremendous talents, not only did the girls who sat in the back continue to pointedly ignore him, and not only did the empty seat in his peripheral vision seem to tear his gaze away from the front of the room, but no one wanted to even acknowledge it. The teachers never said anything, diligently dodging any vague or even blatant questions. None of his classmates wanted to swap theories. Hunk was getting that pinch between his eyebrows, the one he got whenever Lance was being particularly particular. 

Every time he did something wrong, well, he was no Keith. And every time he did something right, he still wasn’t Keith. He couldn’t win. No matter how hard he worked and how much he applied himself, he wasn’t effortlessly talented. He felt Keith’s presence in every red mark on his tests, in every flashing failed simulation, in every pause and hesitation. 

What was more, Lance felt unhinged. Like the sole thing he’d spent so much time and energy focusing on, suddenly dissipated into nothing, and it left him scrambling to find purchase on whatever was nearest. 

So. He would crash the simulator, and he would laugh as loud as he wanted, and he’d flirt with whoever caught his eye, and he’d have fun. He and Hunk would graduate top of their class regardless of whoever they were measured against, take on the universe together, and never look back.

-

Keith works in a silent rotation around the room, collecting empty glasses from tables, and Lance waits patiently for him to come all the way around. Allura cuts delicately into her food, eyeing Yazlort with a lit gaze.

Lance? He’s a lot of things. Hilarious, charming, witty, strong, handsome, etcetera. But he can admit, despite all of those incredible things, that he is not what one would consider “patient.” Plus, he’s pretty sure Keith is avoiding him, which is rude, because Lance hasn’t done anything except what he’s supposed to do. When Allura’s distracted by a stately looking gentleman/horse/squid, Lance slips away from the table with a quick sidestep and a twist into a throng of Halsturists. Around the bend of sequined, tentacled beings, through a line of not-quite dinosaurs until he spots his target hiding near the farthest humongous self serving punch bowl, a mountain of fresh fruits so potent smelling it makes Lance's mouth water just standing near them. Keith’s hair is coming out of his ponytail, stains on his cuffs from food splatter. Lance pretends to grab one of the leftover glowing pink fruits left on one of the buffet tables, peeling it languidly as he saddles up alongside Keith.

“Dude,” Lance asks. “Did you see me? I nailed it. I was all like, right foot, left foot, one two three.”

“You shouldn’t be talking to me,” Keith throws some wadded up napkins onto his platter. “I’m just the help, remember?”

“Yo, c’mon.” Lance tilts his head, still flushed from his dance, still smiling. He picks up a soft red plum-like thing, turning it over in his hands. “You had your chance. You said you didn’t want to be the decoy date. You don’t get to go all jealous on me.”

Keith’s head snaps to the side, eyes wild. “I am _not_ jealous.”

“Keith, man, I get it.” He bites into the fruit, tart and sweet, juice dribbling down his chin. “She’s a six foot tall 10,000 year old alien princess who kicks butt and takes names. I’d kill to be me too.”

A glass breaks somewhere behind them. Keith blinks. “You think I’m jealous of _you?”_

“Uh, duh.” Lance snorts, sucking juice off his fingers. “Who else would I be talking about?”

Dark, round eyes stare into his for a beat that lasts too long, the party swirling around them in a crescendo of music, laughter, voices. It feels weighed, their stare, this moment, and Lance wants to let it pull him down and keep him put. He wants to stay tucked into the corner of this ballroom.

“I got a lead,” Keith says, breaking it, eyes darting to the side, “from Ja’Almettra.”

Lance feels his face contort. “Who?”

“The bartender,” Keith says, pointed. 

Oh. Right. Lance wipes the last of the fruit juice discreetly off on one of his ruffle cuffs.

“Apparently, there’s a trophy room on the main level. Hunk is gonna patch Pidge in so she can hack the security remotely through the control panel in the kitchen, and open it up for us. Allura’s gonna make a speech in a few minutes, so that should keep everyone here put for a while.” Keith is leaning in closer and closer and he speaks. Lance can feel his breath against his face, and licks his lips. “You’re coming with me.”

Lance doesn’t hesitate. “Obviously.”

-

Getting past the guards is surprisingly easy. Pidge is tracking their location through their comms, and Shiro gives Lance and Keith swift instructions on where to go through the elaborate maze of hallways. They duck through the darkened corridors, footsteps soft, alert, and the roar of the party becomes more and more distant with each turn taken. Portraits the size of Lance’s house hang from the walls, creatures he could have never even dreamed to imagine with painted eyes that seem to follow them.

“This place,” Lance says, “is mad creepy.”

“Apparently the trophy room has decapitated heads of the Emperor Dajinlon’s defeated enemies mounted to the walls,” Keith tells him, “if Ja’Almettra was telling the truth.”

“Right.” Lance rolls his eyes. “Ja’Almetrra. The ever-informative bartender. Is there anything he can’t do?”

“Your heads are both going to join that collection of you don’t keep quiet,” Shiro’s voice cuts in from their ear pieces. “Take your next left.”

Really, it would be impossible to miss.

The door itself reaches up the the ceiling, which is too far up to actually see in the dark, but has to be at least several stories tall. Posted on either side of the double doors, laden with lavish curls of gold designs, are two gigantic statues of what appear to be vaguely humanoid boars outfitted in battle gear. “Yo, I gotta take a selfie with one of these things before we leave.”

It earns him a pointed eye roll from Keith, but Lance feels satisfied just to have his attention, knowing the strange pause from before hasn’t followed them.

“All right, I’ve unlocked them,” Pidge says, “You should be able to walk inside.”

Lance looks at Keith. “Rock, paper, scissors--loser has to open the doors?”

Keith stares at him, then at Lance’s hands, then up at the door. He pushes inside, shadows swallowing him without even so much as a glance back. Lance sneers, muttering under his breath, because Keith just has to suck the fun out of everything, doesn’t he?

Even with only the flashlights they’d smuggle in to aid them, Lance can tell the room is enormous. The length of a football field, at least, and they’re inching their way through. And there are, in fact, gilded heads mounted on the walls, of strange creatures Lance couldn’t put names to if he tried. “That one looks suspiciously like my Aunt Gladyce.” Lance shines his light on a blowfish-esque creature, their face captured in anger. “Rest her soul.”

“Can you focus?” Keith snaps. “We need to find the--”

“Fancy plate, ten o’clock!” Lance jumps, practically skipping forward to the enclosed glass case against the wall. He presses his hands against it. “You know, it’s a lot smaller than I thought it would be.”

“Should we break the glass?” Keith asks, adjusting the grip on his flashlight like he’s ready to smash his way through the case right then and there. The Discus itself is just...well, a plate. It's not even that fancy looking, in person. Lance feels cheated, somehow.

“It’s definitely rigged to some kind of alarm system,” Lance hazards a guess. “Pidge, can we confirm this?”

There’s dead silent for a beat. Lance feels his gut sinking. 

“Pidge?” Keith asks, and he must feel it, too.

“So there may have been a silent sensory alarm,” Pidge’s voice sounds high. Panic stricken but attempting (and failing) to remain calm. “And you might have both triggered it when you--”

 _“...is down here.”_ A grunt warbles in the distance, low and echoing through the outside corridor.

“Someone’s coming,” Keith whispers. “We gotta hide.”

“Does it look,” Lance scream-whispers with his arms spread, “like there is anywhere to hide in here?”

Sharp, accusatory, “We have to do something!”

The idea comes in a flash, and it’ll probably work. What’s more, it’s the only plan they’ve got. Lance winces, hummingbird heart inside of his chest as he reaches forward, his eyes on their target. He rubs hands through his hair, making it stick up and out. “Just--don’t kill me for this.”

“What?” Keith hisses, watching with bewildered eyes as Lance yanks Keith’s shirt free from where it’s tucked into his pants. “Lance--”

His hands curl onto the lapels of Keith’s vest, pulling him close and then pinning him to the wall, his thigh between Keith’s legs. There’s grunt of distress against his lips, punctuated with a whimper. A tilt of the head, fixing the angle, Keith sliding his arms around Lance’s waist, hands warm and resting on Lance’s lower back, then lower still. Panic gives way to a rush of other, Lance sighing into their kiss as it slips open, and slips deep.

It’s seconds that feel like hours, and the electric touch of Keith’s tongue to his parted lips, and Lance can’t stop himself from pinning Keith harder against the wall and devouring him. A broken off half-sound from Keith’s throat booms in Lance’s ears, and it’s almost like they’re not really where they are. Like they could be anywhere. His hand comes up to cradle the back of Keith’s head, keeping him in place so he can kiss him so well and so thoroughly Keith won’t be able to do anything but make those tiny needy noises for the rest of forever.

“Hey! What are you two doing down here?”

Lance tears himself away, and even though his heart is turbo throttling inside his chest, he keeps his face easy and his voice even, wiping his mouth with the side of his hand. “Oh, uh, sorry. We we just looking for some place...y’know, private.” He leers for emphasis, feeling Keith’s hand tighten where its curled into the sleeve of his jacket.

The first guard grabs him by the elbow, not rough but firm and inescapable. “This area’s restricted, sir. Let us direct you back to the party.”

“And you back to the kitchen,” the second guard gives Keith a shove, and Lance feels a flair of indignation.

“Hey!” he shouts, and three gazes snap to him, two confused, one mentally blasting him with _shut up, shut up, shut up!_ Lance swallows down the words brimming between his teeth, and instead forces out, “That? Is one spiffy pocket square my friend.”

The guard brings a hand up the breast of his suit. “Really? You don’t think the pattern is too much?”

The pattern looks like a nebula puked it up. “Not at all. I respect a guy who takes a fashion risk.”

 _Or is just a plain fashion disaster,_ he thinks as the guards lead him back down the corridor. Keith’s lips are a puffy red and shiny, his bangs pushed back when he catches Lance’s eye, quiet question hanging in the air. Lance mouths _later_ at Keith, and he’s not sure what he means by that. But later. Later.

-

It ends in absolute mayhem. Because how could it not?

The night is winding down, the lights dimming and the plates cleared. Lance is sitting, watching the Lankobots dance for him, until they suddenly up and disappear. Keith has gotten lost in the throngs of people, serving and cleaning and never even glancing in Lance’s direction. Everyone is congregated at the front of the dance floor, listening to Yazlort give an incredibly long winded speech that echoes on endlessly. He assumes Allura is probably up there, too, because when he'd gotten back from his botched recon she barely said two words to him before slipping off into the crowds. 

He sighs, swishing orange froth around in his glass, and when his eyes slip shut he can feel it. That split second in the trophy room, melting against a boy he swore up and down was his nemesis, forgetting everything--the mission, where they were, Voltron, the entire soundless universe--everything except half gloved hands holding onto him as he held on just as tightly.

Allura crashes down into the seat next to him, skirt of her gown nearly knocking him out of his chair. “We have to go.”

“Uh.” Lance snaps his head around, looking for anyone who might overhear. “But we don’t--”

“We have,” she yanks on his collar ruffles, forcing him in close as she intones, “to leave. Now.”

There’s a low _whoOOomp,_ the chandelier tinkling in protest above them, and then a boom that blows the doors right off the kitchen.

“What the cheese was that?!” Lance leaps to his feet, abut the vault towards the explosion when Allura grabs him by the back of his collar and yanks him off his feet as she starts bolting in the opposite direction. People around them rush out in a stampede of screams and forgotten shoes.

“Our distraction,” she says against his ear. “Now shut up and run.”

“Where’s--” 

“He’ll follow." She isn't even waiting, practically pulling him along like a kite. “Now come on.”

The centerpiece promptly explodes just as they’re far enough out of the way.

“The Lankobots!” he screeches.

Allura’s smile is huge and vicious. “I wasn’t kidding when I said that technology was practically archaic. Feed them one to many commands and--boom!”

Another explosion. Lance quickly gets with the program. He always assumed he’d meet his end in a fiery blaze of glory, in some dangerous mission on an alien planet, but nowhere in that assumption was there room for this many ruffles. He would die in his hoodie, or he wouldn’t die at all, thank you very much.

-

They ride a wave of frantic aliens, the tide of mob mentality moving Allura and Lance towards the palace’s entrance, her hand bruising into his wrist. He catches a flash of Hunk flooding out of the kitchen with the rest of the chefs and servers, but still no Keith.

The alarms sounding overhead rattle Lance’s skull, and he whips around, searching, searching, searching.

He finds a livid, volcanic gaze, branded into Yazlort’s deep beetroot face as a sea of black clad security surrounds him. Their eyes meet through the crowd, somehow, and that steaming rage boils over as Yazlort points wildly, and even over the hordes of stampeding aliens, Lance can hear so clearly, _“Get them!”_

His line of vision to the Emperor is cut off by Keith’s flushed, sweating face. Lance blinks, rapid, startled, and Hunk is behind him, his previously bright white uniform and warm brown skin covered in soot. “Where the hell’ve you--”

Keith cuts him off, “Someone stole our shuttles.”

“What?” Allura screams on the other side of Lance. “How are we meant to get out?”

Lance sees it, then. Small. It looks like someone turned it on, drove it off the launch pad it had been parked on before it’d fully booted up, and then abandoned it after crashing, still lit up and running. He yanks them both forward. “We steal our own.”

-

It’s cramped, full of junk, entire shuttle whirring loudly in protest to being sideways, half on the launch pad and half in the grass as they scramble inside. Allura starts hauling the miscellaneous boxes, piles of clothing, and whatever other junk is lying around out of the doors to lighten the load, yelling at Hunk to help her. Outside, hundreds of other crafts are taking frantic flight, the sound of engines roaring, people screaming, guards swarming in closer and closer. “Oh man,” Hunk gasps, “I think I just hit Yazlort in the head with a seven inch stiletto. And he is not happy about it.”

“Excellent aim, Hunk!” Allura cheers.

Lance crashes into the cockpit without a second thought, hands flying over the panels, searching, trying.

“You can’t pilot this thing,” Keith shouts over the sound of a world ending.

“Right now, there is no can or can’t--it’s only do or die, homie.” Lance straps himself in.

“Then let me,” Keith tries to pull him up and out, but Lance resists, yanking away.

“You snooze, you lose,” he laughs. It’s the strangest thing, that even he confronted with a life or death situation, the satisfaction he gets from beating Keith to something is practically euphoric. Euphoric enough to edge the fear back, every fear of never feeling like he was good enough, every fear of not knowing what to do. None of that matters if he can push Keith out of the pilot’s seat.

The dash lights up. Something Lance has learned about almost all aircrafts, is that if you speak their language, they’ll lead you in the right direction. Or at least, this is what he likes to tell himself. He may not have the precision of Keith’s talent, he may not have his instinct or his natural ability, but hell, that won’t stop him from flying.

He yanks the nearest lever back, smashes the biggest button, and the craft lifts, wobbling off the ground.

“The doors are still open!” Hunk shouts over the ship’s blaring alarm and roaring jets. Because Lance hasn’t figured out which button does that, exactly. 

“Then I suggest,” Lance cranks the shift back, the low electric hum of thrusters booting up harmonizing under him as he says, “You find something to hold onto.”

“GO!” Allura’s shout pierces through everything as she kicks one of Yazlort's guards in the face, and Lance doesn’t have to be told twice. There’s an arm that crosses over his chest, hand coming around to grip onto Lance’s shoulder as they lift off, full throttle towards the sky.

-

Keith finds the button the closes the loading doors by sheer dumb luck, falling against it when Lance takes a nose dive to avoid hitting another shaky aircraft that cuts in front of them. They lose Yazlort in the frantic mob of ships taking off all around them, hiding behind a nearby hovering satellite station until they can tag onto a giant cruiseliner craft that takes off twenty minutes later, tucked under a giant wing and completely out of view. When they finally touch down on the moon a few meters from Shiro and Pidge’s shuttle, Lance feels his seams burst.

“What,” he turns, saying slowly, deliberately, “was that?”

Allura, her hair a splayed mess and the hem of her dress torn all the way up the side, reaches up under her still smoldering skirts, searching with one hand and gathering layers of ruffle out of the way with the other. Lance’s brain short circuits or a blissful moment, until she makes a triumphant ha! before bolting up straight, brandishing a plate in her hand.

Not just any old fancy plate, of course. The Discus.

-

They all cram into the other ship, Shiro piloting with steady handed determination, jaw set. Lance assumes he’s not thrilled about how this whole debacle went down, and he’s sure they’re all in for an incredibly long winded lecture later. At least, he’s sure until, in the camped space of what was only meant to be a three person shuttle, max, Allura winds up half in his lap, the singed edges of her dress splayed across his legs. There’s an unconscious unclenching, Shiro exhaling whatever pent up admonishments caught in the tense line of his shoulders and jaw. Lance squishes against the wall, knees to his chest.

“How did you even get it?” Keith asks. Keith, who is not half on top of Lance, but is actually half on top of Hunk. His ponytail had snapped when they climbed into the hull of the ship, the final band of tension from this entire ordeal breaking loose. 

“Oh, you know.” Allura flutters her eyelashes, delicate hand to her throat. “Just employed a bit of girlish charm.”

“She elbowed the guard that found her in the face, knocking them out before shoving the Discus up her dress.” Pidge adjusts her glasses, reflection flashing white as she does. “It was actually pretty impressive.”

“And then her idea to crash the Lankobots system by overfeeding them commands,” Hunk points out. “Pure genius”

Allura blushes, holding one hand to her cheek. “Well, I wouldn’t have had the idea if you hadn’t found the control board in the kitchen, Hunk. And Pidge, superb hacking, as always.”

Pidge and Hunk promptly bump fists. Keith squirms as Hunk accidentally jostles him with the movement, a smear of ash against his cheek. 

“Hunk,” Lance’s voice surprises himself. “Can we switch spots? My legs are cramping.”

“Oh, uh,” Hunk considers him for a moment, shifting Keith off of him. “Sure, lemme just--”

“Ow,” Pidge hisses. “That was my _hand,_ Hunk.”

“Oh gosh.” Hunk falls to his knees. “I am. So. Sorry. Really, I never meant to--”

“Hunk, dude, sit down,” Keith snaps, being pushed into the back of Shiro’s seat with a grunt. “It’s cramped in here enough as it is.”

“Sorry!” Hunk twists, elbowing Allura in the back of the head, making her shriek.

“Everyone,” Shiro’s sharp tone rings through the ship. He's pressed tight against the controls. “Sit down. Now.”

It’s a very long, very uncomfortable flight.

-

He thinks his mom would really get a kick out of this whole story--like those cheesy action flicks they used to watch together. He really hopes she doesn’t think he’s dead.

-

Naturally, after partying all night, making out with his rival-turned-teammate-turned-maybe-sort-of-crush-ugh, narrowly escaping death via alien stampede, and proceeding to narrowly escape death again less than ten minutes later in a stolen alien space craft, Lance? Is exhausted. He punches in the key code on the door. One second he’s standing in the doorway, and the next he’s flopped down face first into cool, crisp sheets. He purrs, bending his one leg as he shifts his hips, pulling a pillow underneath his head. It smells like a generic soapy shampoo. He inhales deeply.

The door opens again. Lance peeks an eye open as a shadow falls over his face.

“Why,” Keith’s hands are balled into fists at his sides, voice grating, “are you in my bed?”

Lance snuffles his face back into the pillow. It smells like Keith’s hair. “Your room was closer than mine.”

Keith yanks the pillow out from underneath him and Lance’s head hits the mattress. “Get out.”

“I promise I just showered,” Lance grabs the second pillow from the head of the bed. “Squeaky clean.”

“That's not the issue.”

Lance sits up, legs over the side of the bed, disappointment a weight in his chest. “Then what’s the problem, Keith?”

“You! You’re the problem. You think it’s a joke.” Keith hands push back into his hair, eyes shut. “You think that everything is a joke.”

“Okay, woah, first of all.” Lance standing, holding up his hands. The room suddenly feels smaller than before. “Humor is my coping mechanism, and I don’t know if you’re aware because you are the most oblivious person I’ve ever met, but we are coping with a freakin’ lot out here!”

“I’m oblivious?” Keith stresses. “Me?”

“Uh, yeah.” Lance gestures, mostly to the hair. “You.”

“I’m the oblivious one,” Keith repeats. “I’m the oblivious one when you can’t even figure out that--that--”

“That what?” Lance shouts. “What can’t I figure out? Enlighten me, Keith.”

“Just--” he actually looks pained. Physically pained in the way his eyes jam shut. “Forget it. Leave me alone, Lance.”

Lance steps closer as Keith steps away, turning like he’s about to leave himself. “I don’t want to. Don’t tell me what to do.”

“This isn’t about what you want.” Keith whirls on him, and the moment is suspended in time, long, drawn out. “It’s not always about what you want.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t be,” Lance heaves, “If you’d actually say what you want, for once.”

“Like you’ve ever cared about what I want.”

Lance winces, that tightly coiled knot inside him unraveling, the empty space it leaves behind sucking and spluttering inside his chest as he sits up, rubbing at his face. 

“I can’t keep doing this,” Keith says. His arms are crossed, but it looks less defensive, and more like he’s holding himself.

“Right.” Lance mirrors him, arms folded over his chest. He hears the words as they spill out, inwardly cringing at our petulant and childish they sound, but he can’t help it. It’s how he feels, and he has never been able to help how he feels. “Because it’s such a chore to be around me, right? Because you’re just so much better than me. Than everyone.”

Keith stares at him, and Lance can’t pin the look, only that it hurts his chest to see Keith make that face. Hands come up, Keith rubbing at his eyes, looking like the weight of something enormous is bearing down on him, like he’s about ready to let it crush him. Lance wants to help hold him up. He wants to be the person Keith leans on. He feels that want in every blood vessel, in every atom, in his ghost. Keith lets out a big, noisy breath, expelling the exhaustion from his body the best he can as he rights himself.

“That’s honestly what you think?” Keith asks, but it doesn’t sound like he wants an answer. “Of me?”

Lance shrugs. He can’t think of anything else to say, the heavy press of knowing this is the moment he needs to say something, because with each millisecond that passes he can see the shift of Keith’s walls being rebuilt. Those walls that took ages to come down go back up within breaths.

“You know what?” Keith’s laugh comes out clipped. Unright sounding. “You’re right.”

It socks Lance in the stomach. He winces. His mouth wants to stress itself into some kind of smile, or at least a replica of one, and his body is throbbing as it fights to find that comfortable slouch, as it fights to bring them back to something easy and lighthearted. He tries it on, and it’s so strained it probably looks like he’s grimacing rather than grinning, “Dude, c’mon--”

He reaches out, and Keith slaps his hand away. It barely even stings, but the hurt drives bone deep.

Keith says nothing. Lance has no way of knowing if this is because he’s holding back, or if there’s genuinely nothing left to say. He wonders, for what is probably the billionth time, how he ended up here. How they ended up here, of all the places they could’ve, of all the lives they should’ve lived. They’re in this one, they’re in this moment, a moment that feels like an ending Lance isn’t ready for. 

When Keith finally opens his mouth when the words come out, it’s not what Lance wanted. He turns his back fully and says, “Get out.”

-

It could be anyone who sits down next to him, but the second Lance catches a rush of a familiar smell, metallic and warm and so familiar, he knows it’s Hunk. He doesn’t even have to look from where he’s curled up into himself with his arms around his knees, drawing them to his chest.

“So,” Hunk breaks the silence, “you still think he’s only hot objectively speaking?”

Lance buries his face in his folded arms, groaning. 

He starts. “Can I just say--”

“No. Nope. You cannot,” Lance cuts him off, muffled from his face still against his arms.

“--I called it.”

“What?” Lance’s head whips up. “You did not.”

“Did too.” Hunk crosses his arms. “If we ever make it back to Earth, ask Bryan MacNamara. I called it freshman year--you were butt over elbow for Keith.”

“Bryan MacNamara is a spineless mouth breather.” Lance pokes Hunk’s shoulder. “And I was not butt over elbow. That’s not even a real euphemism.” 

Hunk snorts, leaning back on his elbows. Their attention turns to the stars. “You know we’re cool, right. I mean like, you never said, but it was like...heavily implied, maybe? But you now, whatever’s fine, like if you want to talk about it. Or don’t! Or whatever!”

Lance smiles, mostly to himself, and his eyes feel dry and heavy. “There’s nothing to really talk about.”

“I mean, Pidge says you guys like, macked for a solid 30 seconds,” Hunk shrugs his giant shoulders. “I feel like this could serve as a key discussion point.”

He rubs at his face. “Aw, geez…”

“Or not!”

They sit in silence, and then it bursts out of Lance, “He’s just so--agh! All of the time! I can’t deal with it anymore. He thinks he’s always right and he has like, the worst fashion sense I’ve seen outside of bad anime. And! And he’s such a jerk, but then he does stuff like talks with me all night or teaches me to dance, and when he looks at me it’s like he’s laser focused, like he won’t look at anything else and that’s something I’ve always, always wanted and it’s like he knows that.” 

Hunk pauses, then, “Wait, there’s such a thing as good anime?”

It shocks a gut deep laugh out of Lance, and he shoves Hunk, who shoves back. Turns out it’s super hard to be all mopey when your best friend tries to sit on you.

-

The last time he saw his mom was on weekend leave. He and a bunch of other cadets had taken the train back west, wearing crisp uniforms they hoped would get them into the bars. He splurged on his own taxi from the station back to his house, tipped handsomely, and walked up to his house with his Garrison issued luggage, ready to be jumped on and showered with too tight hugs and waxy lipstick kisses. Instead, when he knocked no one answered and when he fished out his key, the twins were plugged into some crazy loud first person shooter game and Nana was asleep on the sofa, everyone else out.

He loves his big family. They’re everything to him, even when they spew garbage or fight or really, _really_ fight, he loves them. He just doesn’t always love how they make him feel. That’s how they always are--they love big, they fight big. Everything is always chaos, and it’s wonderful except when it isn’t. When he gets lost in that whirlwind of doctor's appointments and soccer games and weddings and funerals, and no one notices whether he’s there or not. He has two older siblings and two younger, smack dab in the middle, expected to act like an adult but treated like a kid. In his family, attention wasn’t something you were given. It was something you fought for and won.

He exploded at his mom when she finally came home, a full day of work and then a night out with her friends. Hey eyeliner was smudging under her eyes and she smelled like a bar. He yelled, _You knew I was coming back for the weekend! You knew I was going to be here--why the hell didn’t you come home?_

 _Don’t yell at me, Lance,_ she shot back. _The universe doesn’t revolve around you._

 _The universe doesn’t revolve at all!_ He snapped in his most disgustingly petulant tone. _I should’ve left with dad when I had the chance._

He saw the words hit her, sink into her, and instead of waiting to hear whatever it was she wanted to say back, he stormed out and locked himself in the basement. The next morning, he stole cash out of the purse she’d left on the kitchen table and bought a ticket for earliest train departing for the Garrison. His entire system floods with a guilt so potent he can taste it whenever he thinks about that. They next time they spoke on the phone, he couldn’t even bring himself to say sorry, not even after she apologized for forgetting he was coming home. A few weeks later, he’d be on a blue robot lion plunging through a wormhole into space so deep the light of its stars probably never reached earth.

-

The next morning, he winds around the places in the castle that Keith is usually a fixture in. He takes an extra long shower in hopes of missing him in the kitchen. He avoids the training deck like the plague. He ducks through the halls and tiptoes into the kitchen mid-morning to find Pidge sitting on top of the counter, inspecting a bowl of dried fruits. The first thing she says is, “Get off the floor, you look ridiculous. He’s not even here.”

Lance pops up onto his feet, clearing his throat. “No idea what you’re talking about. We got any almost-coffee in this place?”

He starts banging cabinets open and shut. Pidge sighs. “So he’s still not speaking to you?”

“Man, I am parched." Lance avoids her eyes, opening the fridge. They’re officially out of chunky juice packs, and this day officially sucks.

"I'll take that as a definite no," Pidge huffs. “Doing anything to fix it?”

Lance rips a non-chunky juice pack open and slams the refrigerator door. “Why am I the one who needs to fix it? He’s the one who should fix it. I piloted a stolen aircraft off of an enemy planet wearing lace pillows on my arms. I’ve done enough for one lifetime.” 

Pidge sighs, looking utterly bored and slightly grossed out in the way her mouth sticks to a half-grimace and her eyes wince behind their glasses. “Am I gonna have to deal with this kind of garbage when I fall in love?”

“Woah, woah, woah!” Lance flails. “You’re bringing the L-bomb into this? We haven’t even like, kissed without the pretense of mortal peril. I haven’t even like, asked him to chill. No one is saying anything about love!”

Pidge adjusts her glasses, pushing them up the bridge of her nose. “So you do like him.”

“Like, yes, that’s a good word. I like him. Obviously.” Saying it outloud make his cheeks burn. It’s the first time he’s formed the words, even within his own head. They surge inside of him, alive, and he says them again, “I really like him. I like almost everything about him, except when he gets weird and sad, because then all I want is to make him feel better, but I can’t. I can’t do anything because I’m weird and sad, too. Otherwise I could _fix_ this. Jeez.”

Lance lets himself fall forward against the counter, heels of his palms pressed into his eyes, groaning. 

Pidge hums. “Weirdly enough, out of the two of you, you’re way harder to read. ‘Cause you’ll flirt with almost anything, and you’re so like, expressive all the time it’s hard to distinguish one thing from the other. With Keith, when he feels anything other than broody it’s like a giant flashing neon sign. Anyone within a five planet radius can tell he’s into you. It’s not like he goes out of his way to hold hands with the rest of us.”

Lance sits up, blinking. “He’s into me?”

A sigh, tiny but deeply exasperated. “I mean, I guess I should get all vague and be like, figure it out for yourselves, it’s none of my business. But honestly? As amusing as this has been, it’s time for you sad sacks to pull it together and stop being weird and mopey all the time. It really kills the natural high of fighting in a giant robot together against an evil empire.”

“He’s into me,” Lance repeats. “Like, actually into me? Like, he likes me? Like, like-likes me?”

A deadpan look. “What did I just say?”

“I--” Lance jumps, knocking the stool back. “I have to--”

“He’s on the observation deck,” is all Pidge says. It’s all she has to say, because then Lance is running.

-

He doesn’t just run. He sprints.

He’s lost count of the amount of times he’s been told in his life, _pace yourself, Lance._ Every teacher, every adult, his mom telling him over and over, _slow and steady wins the race_. 

Taking advice has never been one of Lance’s strong suits. He figures there’s no reason to start now, skidding through the double doors, rubber soles of his sneakers catching on the tile and almost sending him toppling over onto his face. Lance barely catches himself in time, the high stressed noise he lets out and windmilling arms announcing his presence just in case everything else didn’t.

Keith is on his feet, stance holding him poised for flight through the still open doors, but frozen in place.

“Do-don’t go!” Lance heaves, hands braced against his knees. “Just--I just ran here. Gimme a minute.”

Keith steps forward. “Lance--”

“You like me.”

Keith freezes. He looks stuck between mad, embarrassed, and ready to bolt, twitchy and red with his eyes narrow. But he doesn’t deny it. 

Lance says it again, standing up straight now, breath even. “You like me.”

Keith shrugs. Shrugs.

Lance feels a full body flail overtake him, eye bulging, hands flying. “Were you ever going to tell me?”

“I thought you _knew.”_ Keith finally breaks his indifferent stance, fists clenched, eyes livid. “How could you not know?”

“Because!” Lance feels his chest heave. “We hated each other!”

“I don’t hate you.” The downturn of the corners of Keith’s mouth is severe, and slices neatly into Lance’s gut. “Do you hate me?”

“I--” No. The answer was no. There were moments where everything Keith did set off something very intense inside of him, a visceral, spiritual, emotional reaction that consumed. There were moments where Keith just slid under Lance’s skin so cleanly and fit underneath so neatly, it was almost as if he lived under it, like his home was between flesh and blood and bone. Lance feels himself uncoil with a sigh.

Keith sits back, hanging his head with his hands pressed down on the back of his skull. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“I mean no, probably not,” Lance says, “but we probably weren’t supposed to be defending the universe from an evil alien force with giant cat robots. C’est la vie, bro.”

Keith looks like he wants to be mad. He looks like fury is simmering under the surface of his expression, the hard line of his brow and the narrow glint of his eyes, but when it bubbles over his face breaks into a wide, unexpected smile. A laugh, and then another, and then Keith rubs at his eyes. “You’re unbelievable.” Keith’s shoulders shake with laughter. “And ridiculous.”

He gently wraps hands around Keith’s wrists. He’s never noticed, but they’re surprisingly slim. He feels like his fingers secure around them perfectly, snug as a lock and key. He pulls, uncovering Keith’s bright pink face, leaning in to say. “Ridiculously, unbelievably into you.”

That pink turns red. “You--”

The realization of what he’s said dawns on him. His own face burns and he buries it into Keith’s shoulder. “Oh, man.”

“You're the one who said it,” Keith snaps. “You have no right to be embarrassed.”

His nose is pressed against the hollow of Keith’s throat. He smells like sweat, like smoke. Lance’s mouth waters, wetting his lips before pursuing them into the barest kiss at the base of that long neck.

Keith protests, voice cracking, “He-ey.”

Another kiss, and then another up the long column of Keith’s throat, along the underside of his jaw. Keith inhales sharply. Lance’s fingers tighten around slims wrists, and he plants a soft peck to the corner of Keith’s mouth, waiting. There’s a shift, Keith turning his head. Their noses bump gently, and Lance grins, unable to help it. A flicker of expectant gazes, and they meet in the middle.

Soft, soft kissing, barely there, the two of them teetering on the edge of something bottomless, and Lance knows all it’ll take is one deep press, one pause, to push them both over. He’s torn. He wants that. He wanted to devour Keith, but he also wants to just keep doing this. He thinks, dimly, he wants whatever Keith will give him. He wants Keith any way he can have him, all at once, and it’s suffocating in the sweetest way.

Shiro’s voice echoes through the outside corridor, “Hey, Keith, do you--”

They vault apart. Lance actually loses his grip on his equilibrium and falls over, splaying out on the floor while Keith pretends to be super interested in the texture of his lampshade. Shiro stands in the doorway, still suited up. His eyes assess the situation, and land on Lance who promptly jumps to his feet, smooths out his shirt, clears his throat.

“Hey guys,” Shiro says, slowly, carefully, “What’s up?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. Not a thing. I’m gonna go,” Lance says, vibrating towards the door. “Kiss you later, Keith.” 

Two pairs of eyes go wide and two pairs of thick eyebrow shoot up to their respective hairlines. The realization of what he’s just said hits him like the g-force of take off. “UH. I MEAN. SEE YOU LATER, KISS--FRICK.”

He bulldozes himself out of the room, nearly knocks Coran over, who shouts after him, “Oi! No panic induced running in the castle unless we’re under attack!” A pause, then a distant, “We’re not under attack, are we?!”

Lance can’t answer, he’s too busy dying.

-

He thinks when they do make it back home--and they will make it back home--he’s probably going to really miss space. That’s how these things go, right? Don’t know what you got 'til it’s gone. That’s probably a song lyric, and if it’s not he’ll make it one. He’ll pick up the guitar he stopped playing when fifteen, relearn all the chords, and sing about space. Dark soundless space and boys who fly and move and breath in defiance of gravity. And when he goes back up, he’ll take it with him, and sing about sunshine and good food and the boy from space he shares both worlds with. Together they'll make enough noise to fill the void, and fill the darkness with something bright.

-

“Who,” Lance yanks the pillow off of his own face, “gave you my door code.”

“It wasn’t hard to figure out. 80085.” The mattress dips under Keith’s weight. “Spells boobs in numbers.”

“A classic,” Lance moves over to let him on, but Keith seems welded to the edge of the bed. “Keith, I need to tell you something.”

A raised eyebrow. “What?”

“You gotta come closer. It’s a secret. I need to whisper it.”

Keith sighs, rolling his eyes before leaning in, ear tilted towards Lance. 

Lance reaches around to the collar of Keith’s ridiculous jacket and tugs him forward and down, and their eyes meet, the briefest moment for a silent question, and Keith’s answer is his own sliding shut. A flutter of butterfly kisses, light, easy, before he lets Keith pull back.

“The secret was I wanted to kiss you,” Lance says.

Keith’s face matches his jacket. “I don’t know what’s worse--how uncool you are, or how charmed I am by it.”

Lance’s face is warm. “The kid in the cropped jacket and fingerless gloves is calling me uncool.”

“They’re functional.”

“Yeah, functional for like, the edgy member of a boy band.”

“Hunk wears fingerless gloves too!”

“Yeah but.” Lance sits up on his elbows. “He’s the cute, sensitive one. He can get away with it without it being a cliche.”

“I have no idea why.” Keith stares down at him. “But I want to kiss you again.”

“Yeah,” Lance feels his breath catch in his throat. “Yeah, let’s do that.”

Kissing Keith is like the first time he ever took off in flight school. Kissing Keith is the first wave he ever surfed. Kissing Keith is singing at the top of his lungs with all the window’s rolled down in his first car. It’s the first time he piloted Blue. It’s watching a meteor shower from the observation deck super late at night when he knows he has to be up early the next morning, but he can’t make himself care, can’t make himself move away from the overwhelming existence of shooting stars.

Man, he is so uncool.

Arms wind around shoulders, and sweet denim friction sparks low and easy between them as Keith falls into him.

“Friggin’--” Lance covers his eyes with his hands. “I’m so happy I could die.”

“Stop saying stuff like that,” Keith grabs his wrists and pushes just enough to make Lance see him. His face is wonderfully pink, and he clearly doesn’t mean what he’s saying. Lance pulls him down. The ship hurtles deeper and deeper into space, and Keith’s hair splays across his sheets for the first and hopefully not the last time. Fingers interlocking, Lance can’t imagine not feeling half skin half leather, can’t imagine not feeling those electromagnetic waves pulsing in time with his heart. Outside, the universe, black and soundless, passes them by.

 

_end._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you: you said you would update within a week
> 
> me: *sweats*
> 
> you: it’s been four months
> 
> me: *sweating intensifies*
> 
> you: and also like, if the paladins automatically hear all alien languages as English, why did Coran need to translate the click language in the last chapter?
> 
> me:...man this is a frikkin voltron fanfic where i make two of the main characters blush and kiss. the heck do you want from me?
> 
>  
> 
> thanks so much for reading, hope you all enjoyed!!! you can find me on tumblr @ [chillnaxin](http://chillnaxin.tumblr.com/)


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